e, I
mean, or Mabel--could tell you how."

"Robert, I am too old for these follies."

"James, you are the youngest man I ever knew. Any boy of eighteen would
be apt to know better how to manage such matters, and--if you will
pardon the frankness you employ yourself--to exhibit more sense."

He stared a little, and I gave him time to recover. Then he took up his
parable, defensively falling back on the abstract, after his manner.

"Of course I have thought of these things, Bob, and the philosophy of
them, if they can be said to have any. They seem much like everything
else. Taking Life in its unfinancial aspects, men do things, not because
the particular things are worth doing, but as an apology for the
unwarranted liberty they take in being alive. 'I am: why am I?' said the
youth at prayer-meeting, and everybody gave it up. As an effort toward
answering his own conundrum, he entered the ministry. Being alive, we
have to make a pretense of doing something, which else might better
remain undone. That is why books are written, and controversies waged;
it explains most of our intellectual and moral activities. So with
society: time must be killed, and we go out for an evening, though we
are dreadfully bored and gain nothing at all. So, I suppose, with what
is called love. The emotional part of our nature, which is the absurdest
part of all, finds or fancies itself unemployed: a void craves and aches
in the breast, and the man, as an old farmer once expressed it, is
'kinder lovesick for suthin he ain't got and dunno what.' Almost any
material of the other sex, if you allow a little for taste and
temperament, will fill the void--in a way, and for a time at least.
Darby marries Joan and is content, though any other woman would have
served his turn as well. With us of the finer feelings and higher
standards, the only difference is that we rant more and sophisticate
more, as belongs to our wider range. No one ever felt thus
before--because the feeling is new to us, and newer each time it comes:
so Festus protests to each successive mistress, perjuring himself in all
sincerity. Nor was any mistress ever so beautiful and divine as this
one, appointed to possess and be adored by us. All that is purely a
mental exercise: carry the illusion a little farther, and it might be
practised as well on a milliner's lay-figure. 'He that loves a coral
cheek or a ruby lip admires' is simply a red hot donkey, Bob. Nature
provides the imbecil