"I am getting too old for that, I fear. At what age, pray, did you
receive the arrow in your heart?"

"When I was a boy, I loved a vision. The happiest hours of my life were
those in which I was slowly, tremulously daring to believe that I had
found my vision at last in you. And then the dreams that followed! What
a career was to have been mine! I remember how you used to reproach me
because I was austere with women and proud with men. How could I have
been otherwise? I contrasted the gifts of all other women with those of
my elect, and the lot of all other men with my own. Can you wonder that,
doing so, I carried my head among the clouds? You must remember how
unfamiliar failure was to me. At school, at Oxford, in society, I had
sought distinction without misgiving, and attained it without
difficulty. My one dearest object I deemed secure long before I opened
my lips and asked expressly for it. I think I walked through life at
that time like a somnambulist; for I have since seen that I must have
been piling mistake upon mistake until out of a chaos of meaningless
words and smiles I had woven a Paphian love temple. At the first menace
of disappointment--a thing as new and horrible to me as death--I fled
the country. I came back with only the ruins of the doomed temple. You
were not content to destroy a ruin: the feat was too easy to be
glorious. So you rebuilt it in one hour to the very dome, and lighted
its altars with more than their former radiance. Then, as though it
were but a house of cards--as indeed it was nothing else--you gave it
one delicate touch and razed it to its foundations. Yet I am afraid
those altar lamps were not wholly extinguished. They smoulder beneath
the ruins still."

"I wonder why they made you the Newdigate poet at Oxford, Sholto: you
mix your metaphors most dreadfully. Dont be angry with me: I understand
what you mean; and I am very sorry. I say flippant things because I
must. How _can_ one meet seriousness in modern society except by chaff?"

"I am not angry. I had rather you did not understand. The more flippant
you are, the more you harden my heart; and I want it to be as hard as
the nether millstone. Your pity would soften me; and I dread that."

"I believe it does every man good to be softened. If you ever really
felt what you describe, you greatly over-estimated me. What can you lose
by a little more softness? I often think that men--particularly good
men--make their way through