to every pretty woman I
met, in the search for happiness. I may have got five per cent. return on
my outlay, which is perhaps not bad in these hard times; but I certainly
did not get even that in happiness. I got it in--other ways.'

'And if you had to begin afresh?'

He stood up, turned his back on the room, and looked down at me from his
bent height. His knotted hands were shaking, as they always shook.

'I would do the same again,' he whispered.

'Would you?' I said, looking up at him. 'Truly?'

'Yes. Only the fool and the very young expect happiness. The wise merely
hope to be interested, at least not to be bored, in their passage through
this world. Nothing is so interesting as love and grief, and the one
involves the other. Ah! would I not do the same again!'

He spoke gravely, wistfully, and vehemently, as if employing the last
spark of divine fire that was left in his decrepit frame. This undaunted
confession of a faith which had survived twenty years of inactive
meditation, this banner waved by an expiring arm in the face of the
eternity that mocks at the transience of human things, filled me with
admiration. My eyes moistened, but I continued to look up at him.

'What is the title of the new book?' he demanded casually, sinking
into a chair.

'_Burning Sappho_,' I answered. 'But the title is very misleading.'

'Bright star!' he exclaimed, taking my hand. 'With such a title you will
surely beat the record of the Good Dame.'

'Hsh!' I enjoined him.

Jocelyn Sardis was coming towards us.

The Good Dame was the sobriquet which Lord Francis had invented to
conceal--or to display--his courteous disdain of the ideals represented
by Mrs. Sardis, that pillar long established, that stately dowager, that
impeccable _doyenne_ of serious English fiction. Mrs. Sardis had
captured two continents. Her novels, dealing with all the profound
problems of the age, were read by philosophers and politicians, and one
of them had reached a circulation of a quarter of a million copies. Her
dignified and indefatigable pen furnished her with an income of fifteen
thousand pounds a year.

Jocelyn Sardis was just entering her mother's world, and she had
apparently not yet recovered from the surprise of the discovery that she
was a woman; a simple and lovable young creature with brains amply
sufficient for the making of apple-pies. As she greeted Lord Francis in
her clear, innocent voice, I wondered sadly why her mother should