"Paul, I won't have you constantly ordering that expensive fruit for me from the Hague."
"My dear Constance," he would answer, "I'm saving the cost of it on my ties; for my dandyism is gradually wearing away."
In the evening, in the great sitting-room—while the wind blew round the house and the dice fell hard on the backgammon-board and the gaudy colour of the cards flickered in the hands of the bridge-players—Paul's music came as a new sound, driving away the grey melancholy, tinkling in drops of silver harmony. He played everything by heart; and the only thing that his attentive audience couldn't stand was his habit of suddenly breaking off in the most delightful passages to defend some philosophical thesis which no one at that instant was thinking of attacking, with which everyone agreed at the time. Nevertheless, despite his playing and his new-found cheerfulness, he felt old, lonely and aimless. Whenever he had an opportunity of talking quietly to Constance for a moment, without having to run after her downstairs, to the store-room, he would say, sadly:
"I? I'm an old bachelor, an old boy. I'm a typical old bachelor."
"You ought to get married, Paul," she said, one day.
He gave a violent start:
"Constance," he said, "if ever you try to lay a trap for me, I swear I'll run away and you shall never set eyes on me again!... Where should I find a wife who would be as tidy as I? And then I'm so difficult to please that the poor child would have a terrible life of it.... Sometimes, yes, sometimes I do cherish the illusion ... of marriage with a very young girl, one whom I could train according to my ideas, my philosophy, my ideas and philosophy of purity ... of which the loftiest is the idea of purity in soul and life...."
"That's a regular old bachelor's idea, Paul: getting married to a very young girl, training her in your ideas. A fine woman of thirty or over: that's better."
"As old as that!" exclaimed Paul.
"A woman of thirty is not old for a man of forty-six."