"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 whom they love, and still fewer women resign themselves to their fiftieth year unless they are wrapped up in a beloved son."
Sir Joseph, to whom Mrs. Delarayne, except for her repeated refusals of his hand, had never been precisely a problem, demurred a little. "It certainly sheds some light,—yes," he said slowly. "But don't you think that a second great love with a man more or less of her own generation is equally satisfying to a woman like that?"
"How can it be when it is simply a repetition of a former and thoroughly explored experience?" Lord Henry replied. "I do not mean, mind you, that great-hearted women who have not enjoyed that exquisite relationship to a beloved son, are conscious that it is this circumstance which has been lacking in their lives. Because precious little whatever is conscious in the best women. But in their loathing and repudiation of advancing years, and in their repeated attachments to men of my generation, such women reveal to the psychologist the constant ache they feel from the vast empty chamber in their hearts."
For some moments Sir Joseph played idly with an ivory paper-knife on his desk. He had completely forgotten the object of Lord Henry's visit. It was as if he had always known the man, and that they were just having one of their usual pleasant chats after their work was done. Such was the power that Lord Henry possessed of immersing his listeners in the thoughts that occupied his mind.
"And this," continued the younger man, after a while, "is the only consideration which makes me feel I ought to marry. I mean that it almost amounts to wanton vandalism not to give a wife of one's choice and a son of one's own begetting at least the chance of beautifying the world by this most wonderful of all relationships."
"You are a poet," said Sir Joseph with that spontaneous penetration of which the uncultivated are sometimes capable.
"If to understand Mrs. Delarayne a man must be a poet, then I am one," Lord Henry replied, smiling in his irresistible way.