“In what way?” asked Rennes.
“He doesn't know,” said Reckage, “what a devilish fine chap he is! I wish to God that I could prevent this marriage.”
“Why?”
“I say nothing against Mrs. Parflete. She's a high-class woman and so on. Awfully beautiful, too. As clever as they make 'em, and not a breath against her. All the same, I am not very sweet on love matches for men of Orange's calibre. They never answer—never.”
“I don't agree with you there,” replied the artist, “because I believe that a love match—even when it dissolves, as it may, into a mistake—is the best thing that can happen to any man.”
After this they discussed bindings. Lord Reckage was the first amateur authority on the subject.
CHAPTER VI
At five the next morning Robert was writing letters. Then, as soon as the gates of Hyde Park were open, he walked out. The recurrence of familiar sentiments on the essentials that make up the condition known as happiness would neither convince, nor inspire, the powers of an imagination which, with all its richness, was, apart from the purely artistic faculty, analytical and foreboding. Self-doubt, however, has no part in passion. Of the many miseries it may bring, this, perhaps the worst of human woes, can never be in its train. Men in love—and women also—may distrust all things and all creatures, but their own emotion, like the storm, proves the reality of its force by the mischief it wreaks. Robert's spirit, borne along by this vehemence of feeling, caught the keen sweetness of the early air, not yet infected by the day's traffic. His melancholy—the inevitable melancholy produced by sustained thought on any subject, whether sublime or simple—was dispelled. The Park, which was empty but for a few men on their way to work, and runners anxious to keep in training, had its great trees still beautiful from the lingering glance of summer; the wide and misty stretches of grey grass were fresh in dew; the softness and haze—without the gloom—of autumn were in the atmosphere. The pride of love requited and the instincts of youth could not resist these spells of nature. Robert remembered only that it was his wedding-day: that every throb of his pulse and every second of time brought him nearer to the supreme joy of his life and the supreme moment. He had never used his nerves with bliss and tears, and he did not belong to the large army of young gentlemen who own themselves proudly