"But, whether you ought to have them or not, are you equally sure that they would be worth possessing?"
"How can I know till I have had them?"
"Easily. There are two ways of learning the value of anything we want: one is to get it, the other to lose it."
"We're crabbed against the things we miss."
"Are we? I don't know. Even if we are, there's a good deal to be said in favour of the comfort that lies in the philosophy of sour grapes."
She did not wholly follow him, but she was clear on the chief point. "It doesn't make me feel any more contented," she said, "to believe that I wouldn't have been happy if I had got something that I wanted to get and didn't."
Stainton shook his head.
"Some time," he said, "that belief will be your greatest comfort."
Muriel looked away. She was revolving this problem in her youthful mind, and when she replied it was by the argumentum ad hominem, which is an excellent argument and generally ab femina.
"You have been successful," she began. "If you had not been, would it have made you more contented to believe that success wouldn't have brought you happiness?"