"Because the happiness of the best man I know is absolutely dependent on her."
"Claud! He told you?"
"Yes."
The young man leaned his arm on the mantelpiece, fixing a meditative eye on his niece as she crawled up his leg.
"Did you—did you not—dissuade him in any way?"
"No," was the slow reply.
"I think, Claud, if he asked for your opinion—"
"Well, he didn't—that is, not on the lady. He did not even mention her name. I told him that, broadly speaking, I thought everything depended on compatibility of disposition; but what on earth is the use, Mab, of cautioning a man who is head over ears in love, as he is? You might as well try to stop Niagara; he is beyond the reasoning stage. Besides, what could I urge? That I believed the lady of his choice to be selfish, vain, and not too sweet-tempered? I couldn't say that, you know; and of course he thinks he is likely to know about as much of her as I do; he has been with her, on and off, ever since the autumn."
"Oh, you men, you men!" cried Mab. "Caught by a pretty face, even the best and noblest of you!"
"Not I," interrupted Claud, shortly. "No! That beautiful girl upstairs doesn't know what it means to love as I would have my wife love me. She has no passion in her! And she does not know the value of love! She does not know that it is the one, only central force of life—the thing without which any lot is hard—with which any hardship is merely a trifle not worth noticing. How should she know the power of it, that flame which, once lit, burns slowly at first,—cold, perhaps, and faintly—for the loves that flare up at once are straw fires, they burn out. This that I mean grows slowly, steadily, till all the heart is one glowing, throbbing mass, flinging steadfast heat and radiance around. This is love."