ye and hand, in step and voice."

"Who was the man?" suggested Frank Armour. "A man about her own age,
or a little more, but who was an infant beside her in knowledge of the
world." "She was in love with the fellow? It was a grande passion?"
asked Lambert.

"In love with him? No, not at all. It was a momentary revival of an
old-possibility."

"You mean that such women never really love?"

"Perhaps once, Frank, but only after a fashion. The rest was mere
imitation of their first impulses."

"And this woman?"

"Well, the end came sooner than I expected. I tell you I was shocked at
the look in her face when I saw it again. That light had flickered out;
the sensitive alertness of hand, eye, voice, and carriage had died away;
lines had settled in the face, and the face itself had gone cold, with
that hard, cold passiveness which comes from exhausted emotions and a
closed heart. The jewels she wore might have been put upon a statue with
equal effect."

"It seems to me that we might pitch into men in these things and not
make women the dreadful examples," said a voice from the corner. It was
the voice of Richard, who had but just entered.

"My dear Dick," said his father, "men don't make such frightful
examples, because these things mean less to men than they do to women.
Romance is an incident to a man; he can even come through an affaire
with no ideals gone, with his mental fineness unimpaired; but it is
different with a woman. She has more emotion than mind, else there were
no cradles in the land. Her standards are set by the rules of the heart,
and when she has broken these rules she has lost her standard too. But
to come back, it is true, I think, as I said, that man or woman must
not expect too much out of life, but be satisfied with what they can get
within the normal courses of society and convention and home, and the
end thereof is peace--yes, upon my soul, it's peace."

There was something very fine in the blunt, honest words of the old man,
whose name had ever been sweet with honour.

"And the chief thing is that a man live up to his own standard," said
Lambert. "Isn't that so, Dick?--you're the wise man."

"Every man should have laws of his own, I should think; commandments of
his own, for every man has a different set of circumstances wherein to
work--or worry."

"The wisest man I ever knew," said Frank, dropping his cigar, "was a
little French-Canadian trapper up in the Saskatchewan country. A prie