"Don't," he said; "don't go in for having opinions. When anybody begins to cultivate and profess opinions their sense of humour must be on the wane. Keep your mind free of rooted ideas. You were wont to love the rainbow play of change, to welcome sudden extremes as a sign of health and mental activity. Before you married you hated opinions."
"That was before I grew happy, I think. Happiness runs one into a groove very quickly; it steadies our ideas. Now, you won't be perfectly happy until you marry."
"To find her."
"Why, that's not so difficult."
"Never, Honor. There was only one possible mother for my children. You are going over ground that I travelled centuries ago; at least it seems centuries. I told my fib and looked ahead, quite like a son of wisdom for once, and counted the cost, or tried to. Let all that sleep. I shall never know to my dying day how I brought it off, but I did. Perhaps a generous sympathy for unborn boys and girls had as much to do with it as anything else. Candidly and without sentiment, it is time we Yeolands came to an end. For my part I shall die easier knowing that I'm the last of them. I never was very keen about living for the mere sake of living, even in old days, and now I care less than ever. Not that I want to die either; but I go wandering through this great, roaring, rollicking, goose-fair of a world, stopping at a booth here, shooting for nuts or something equally valuable there; and when Dustman Death surprises me, pottering about and wasting my money,—when he puts out his grey claws and asks for his own again, I shall welcome him with perfect cheerfulness."
"Nonsense—and wicked nonsense! You—what?—thirty-two, or some absurd age—trying to talk like Uncle Mark! And Godleigh free! I won't have it, Christo. If ever you loved me, you must obey me in this and find a wife."
"Can't; won't; too small-hearted. I've got nothing to give a girl; and all your fault. Some of me really died, you know, when I pretended that all of me did."
"Then I suppose that it's my turn to go away and perish now? Would you feel equal to marrying anybody if I was dead?"
"Not a parallel instance at all. For you there was a grand chap waiting—a man worth having; else I should not have died, I assure you. In my case there's no grand woman waiting; so if you expire, you will merely be bringing a great deal of trouble upon many excellent people and doing nobody the least good—not even my nebulous prospective lady. No, Myles and I would merely share a mile of crape and live in black gloves for ever. You die! What a thought!"
"Sometimes I wish I had long ago."