"It hasn't," says Ronayne, gloomily.
"You terrify me," says Mr. Kelly, "because I feel positive my day is yet to come, and with all this misery before me I feel suicidal. Don't my dear fellow! don't look like that! Give her up; go and fall in love with some little girl of your own age or even younger."
The "even" is offensive, but Ulic is too far gone in melancholy to perceive it.
"It is too late for that kind of advice," he says: "I want her, and her only. I don't know how to describe it, but——"
"There are chords," quotes his friend gravely.
"Just so," says the miserable Ronayne, quite as gravely; which so upsets the gravity of his companion that it is with difficulty he conceals his ill-timed mirth.
"What is that mutilated article in your hand?" he asks at length, when he has conquered his muscles.
"This—eh!—oh, her card, I suppose," says Ronayne, viciously. Yet even as he speaks he smooths out the crumpled card, and regards it with a dismal tenderness as being in part her.
"You're engaged to her for the next," says Mr. Kelly, looking over his shoulder: "what an unfortunate thing! If I were you," mournfully, "I should go home. Get ill. Do something."
"And so let her think I'm wasting in despair because she prefers another? No, I shan't," says Ronayne, with sudden animation. "I shall see it out with her. If she chooses to cancel this dance well and good, but I shall certainly remind her she promised it to me."