"Oh, of course. That goes without saying. Now we come back to the point we started from. As I told you before, I never do know them, and it keeps me out of a world of mischief."
Melville seated himself by the fire, and buried his hands in his curly hair.
"Ralph, while we are at it," he said, "I want to give you a word of advice. Verb. sap., you know. If any man knows you, I am that man. As you were remarking, you have lain on my dissecting-board for twenty years."
"I wish you had done me under water. You would have made a neater thing of it."
"So I would, old fellow, but you were too big. The difficulty was to get you into my mental laboratory at all."
Dudley bowed.
"Don't bow. It was well earned. You fished for it uncommon neatly. But you know, Ralph, I am serious now. Let me say it for once—you are awfully fastidious, awfully sensitive, awfully over-cultured. Few women could please you. It matters little whether you marry a good woman or a bad,—I don't know that there is much difference between them myself; the saints and the sinners get jumbled somehow,—but you must marry a woman of the world. Gretchen would be awfully irresistible, I know—for a month; she would not wear. Marry a woman full of surprises, a woman who does not take all her colour from you, a woman who can keep you dangling, as it were."
"It sounds restful."
Melville laughed. "Restful or not, that's the woman for you, Ralph. You are not equal to an hour at the Pavilion, I suppose? Well, ta-ta."
Dudley sat in silence till the echo of his friend's steps on the pavement had died away. Then he rose and tramped up and down the room again.