ist to boot heel. And he would have a slightly
reflective air and he would be just opening one kind of case and just
closing another.

Good God, what did they all see in him? for I swear there was all there
was of him, inside and out; though they said he was a good soldier. Yet,
Leonora adored him with a passion that was like an agony, and hated
him with an agony that was as bitter as the sea. How could he arouse
anything like a sentiment, in anybody?

What did he even talk to them about--when they were under four
eyes?--Ah, well, suddenly, as if by a flash of inspiration, I know. For
all good soldiers are sentimentalists--all good soldiers of that type.
Their profession, for one thing, is full of the big words, courage,
loyalty, honour, constancy. And I have given a wrong impression of
Edward Ashburnham if I have made you think that literally never in the
course of our nine years of intimacy did he discuss what he would have
called "the graver things." Even before his final outburst to me, at
times, very late at night, say, he has blurted out something that gave
an insight into the sentimental view of the cosmos that was his.
He would say how much the society of a good woman could do towards
redeeming you, and he would say that constancy was the finest of
the virtues. He said it very stiffly, of course, but still as if the
statement admitted of no doubt.

Constancy! Isn't that the queer thought? And yet, I must add that poor
dear Edward was a great reader--he would pass hours lost in novels of a
sentimental type--novels in which typewriter girls married Marquises and
governesses Earls. And in his books, as a rule, the course of true love
ran as smooth as buttered honey. And he was fond of poetry, of a certain
type--and he could even read a perfectly sad love story. I have seen his
eyes filled with tears at reading of a hopeless parting. And he loved,
with a sentimental yearning, all children, puppies, and the feeble
generally... .

So, you see, he would have plenty to gurgle about to a woman--with
that and his sound common sense about martingales and his--still
sentimental--experiences as a county magistrate; and with his intense,
optimistic belief that the woman he was making love to at the moment was
the one he was destined, at last, to be eternally constant to.... Well,
I fancy he could put up a pretty good deal of talk when there was no
man around to make him feel shy. And I was quite astonished, during his
fi