rightly: how could
this quinquagenarian be given a son whom she could worship? To Mrs.
Delarayne the problem was: how could she induce this young man to
overcome the obvious objection consisting in the disparity of their
ages? She could read her own nature no further than this.

"Have you never any feelings of loneliness?" she demanded. "Don't you
ever reflect upon the happiness you might secure yourself and somebody
else by being decently married?"

"I might be tempted to marry. It is perfectly possible," Lord Henry
replied. "Hitherto the only thing that has deterred me has been my
vanity. It would be so horrible to watch the love a woman might bear me
slowly turning to indifference,--for that is what marriage means,--that
I don't think I could have the courage to embark upon the undertaking."

"You are flippant," said the widow sadly. "You pipe and joke while Rome
is burning."

"One day, of course, I shall have to marry," he muttered, as if to
himself.

She would have liked to ask him to Brineweald. She wanted a deep breath
of him before he left. For some reason, however, for which she was not
too anxious to account, she did not express this wish.

"Why will you _have_ to?" she asked.

"I mean," he said, "simply what I am always repeating in my clinique,
that save in the case of those who are really called to celibacy,--the
Newmans, the Spencers, and the Nietzsches of this world,--physical and
spiritual health is difficult without a normal sexual life."

"Quite so," the widow agreed.

"Quite so," Lord Henry repeated, "a _normal_ sexual life." He emphasised
the word "normal," hoping thereby to convey gently how hopeless her
scheme was.

"And when will that be?"

"Oh, Heaven knows!"

She rose, went to the window, and there was a pause.

"Lord Henry," she began after a while, "would it seem odd to you? Would
you think me shameless? Am I hopelessly abandoned, to tell you now, how
very much more than mere friendship, mere gratitude I feel for you?"

He buried his face in his hands and held his breath. He knew this was
inevitable; but as he had already told St. Maur, he had a heart.

She did not look at him, but continued speaking fluently, warmly,
incisively.

"Ever since I met you, I have felt what all of us women long to feel,
the ridiculous inferiority of the bulk of modern men suddenly relieved
by an object which we are willing to serve and obey. Your cures, if you
have ever effected any in me, we