A flashing smile dimpled the corners of her mouth.
"Why, yes, I quite agree with you," she retorted playfully. "But if no husband come forward, then it cannot be helped!"
He rose, and, pushing away his chair, walked up and down in silence.
She watched him with a sense of growing irritability, and her heart beat with uncomfortable quickness. Why did he seem to hesitate so long? Presently he stopped in his slow movement to and fro, and stood looking down upon her with a fixed intensity which vaguely troubled her.
"It is difficult to advise," he said, "and it is still more difficult to control. In your case I have no right to do either. I am an old man, and you are a very young woman. You are beginning your life,—I am ending mine. Yet, young as you are, you say with apparent sincerity that you do not believe in love. Now I, though I have loved and lost, though I have loved and have been cruelly deceived in love, still believe that if the true, heavenly passion be fully and faithfully experienced, it must prove the chief joy, if not the only one, of life. You think otherwise, and perhaps you correctly express the opinion of the younger generation of men and women. These appear to crowd more emotion and excitement into their lives than ever was attained or attainable in the lives of their forefathers, but they do not, or so it seems to me, secure for themselves as much peace of mind and satisfaction of soul as were the inheritance of bygone folk whom we now call 'old-fashioned.' Still, you may be right in depreciating the power of love—from your point of view. All the same, I should be sorry to see you entering into a loveless marriage."
For a moment she was silent, then she suddenly plunged into speech.
"Dear Mr. Helmsley, do you really think all the silly sentiment talked and written about love is any good in marriage? We know so much nowadays,—and the disillusion of matrimony is so very complete! One has only to read the divorce cases in the newspapers to see what mistakes people make——"
He winced as though he had been stung.
"Do you read the divorce cases, Lucy?" he asked. "You—a mere girl like you?"
She looked surprised at the regret and pain in his tone.