ne. He shrank from them all, as too downright, bluff, and
active; too worldly and unaesthetic; or too stiff and narrow. Amongst
the younger men in his profession he was often aware of faces which
attracted him, but one could not confide deep personal questions to men
half one's age. But of his own generation, or his elders, he knew not
one to whom he could have gone.

VIII

Leila was deep in her new draught of life. When she fell in love it had
always been over head and ears, and so far her passion had always burnt
itself out before that of her partner. This had been, of course, a great
advantage to her. Not that Leila had ever expected her passions to burn
themselves out. When she fell in love she had always thought it was for
always. This time she was sure it was, surer than she had ever been.
Jimmy Fort seemed to her the man she had been looking for all her life.
He was not so good-looking as either Farie or Lynch, but beside him
these others seemed to her now almost ridiculous. Indeed they did not
figure at all, they shrank, they withered, they were husks, together
with the others for whom she had known passing weaknesses. There was
only one man in the world for her now, and would be for evermore. She
did not idealise him either, it was more serious than that; she was
thrilled by his voice, and his touch, she dreamed of him, longed for him
when he was not with her. She worried, too, for she was perfectly
aware that he was not half as fond of her as she was of him. Such a new
experience puzzled her, kept her instincts painfully on the alert. It
was perhaps just this uncertainty about his affection which made him
seem more precious than any of the others. But there was ever the other
reason, too-consciousness that Time was after her, and this her last
grand passion. She watched him as a mother-cat watches her kitten,
without seeming to, of course, for she had much experience. She had
begun to have a curious secret jealousy of Noel though why she could not
have said. It was perhaps merely incidental to her age, or sprang from
that vague resemblance between her and one who outrivalled even what she
had been as a girl; or from the occasional allusions Fort made to
what he called "that little fairy princess." Something intangible,
instinctive, gave her that jealousy. Until the death of her young
cousin's lover she had felt safe, for she knew that Jimmy Fort would not
hanker after another man's property; had he no