chair, and stared expectantly at his visitor.

"She has not had her second decisive love affair, you see," Lord Henry
continued. "And every day she arrays herself to experience it,--that
second and decisive love affair which alone reconciles the best women to
old age and to snow-white locks."

Sir Joseph fidgeted. He did not understand, but thought he did. "Her
second and decisive love affair," he repeated,--"yes."

"We are apt to forget," continued Lord Henry, "that all deep, decently
constituted women have two definite relationships to man, one alone of
which is insufficient to satisfy them. The first is their relationship
of wife to the man more or less of their own generation whom they have
loved; the second is the relationship of mother to the man of their
children's generation, whom under favourable circumstances they
worship."

Sir Joseph shifted in his chair, raised his hand to his chin and looked
fixedly at the speaker.

"This last and most precious relationship is the only one that
reconciles a woman to her wrinkles and makes her happy in her grey
hairs. Without it she takes to peroxide, smooths out her wrinkles with
cream, and what is even more tragic, developes a tendency to pursue the
young men of her children's generation. People call it ridiculous,
lunatic,--so it would be, if it were not so nobly, so terribly
pathetic."

"But I have known women with grown-up sons behave exactly as Mrs.
Delarayne behaves," Sir Joseph objected with as much breath as he could
summon in his surprise at what Lord Henry had said.

"Not sons with whom they are in love," Lord Henry corrected. "Most
mothers have sons, but of these not all experience that great love for
one of their male offspring which is perhaps the most beautiful, the
most passionate, and the most permanent of earthly relationships. Mrs.
Delarayne is obviously a woman who would have been capable of such a
relationship had she only had a son."

"Is it only one particular son?" Sir Joseph enquired with an unconscious
note of profound humility in his voice.

"Always--yes!"

Lord Henry, still tugging at his wisp of hair, now turned to Sir Joseph,
and blinking very quickly, as was his wont when deeply absorbed in a
subject, contemplated the baronet for a moment in silence.

"Doesn't that clear up the problem of Mrs. Delarayne a little for you?"
he asked at last. "Believe me, few women care to admit that they are
thirty-five unless they have a husband