"I never knew you 'funk a fence' before!" says his cousin to him, sarcastically.
"I have tried to say something to her," replies Gervase, moodily, "but she gives me no hearing, no occasion."
"I should have thought you were used well enough to make both for yourself," returns his cousin, with curt sympathy. "You have always been 'master of yourself, though women sigh,'—a paraphrase of Pope at your service."
Gervase smiled, conscious of his past successes and willing to acknowledge them.
"But you see she does not sigh!" he murmurs, with a sense that the admission is not flattering to his own amour-propre.
"You have lost the power to make her sigh, do you mean?"
"I make no impression on her at all. I am utterly unable to imagine her feelings, her sentiments,—how much she would acknowledge, how much she would ignore."
"That is a confession of great helplessness! I should never have believed that you would be baffled by any woman, above all by a woman who once loved you."
"It is not easy to make a fire out of ashes."
"Not if the ashes are quite cold, certainly; but if a spark remains in them, the fire soon comes again."