"I saw Fontaine sending flowers to his wife. He'd been at Athalie's all the evening. There are only two occasions on which a man sends flowers to his wife; one of them is when he's in love with her.
"Aren't we the last word in scuts? Custom-ridden,
habit-cursed, afraid, eternally afraid of something—of our own sort always, and of their opinions. And that offering of flowers when the man who sends them hopes to do something of which he is ashamed, or has already done it!
"How I do run on! In vino veritas—there's some class to pickled truth! Here are olives for thought, red peppers for honesty, onions for logic—and cauliflower for constancy—and fifty-seven other varieties, Clive—all absent in the canned make-up of the modern man.
"'When you and I behind the veil have passed'—but they don't wear veils now; and now is our chance.
"We'll never take it. Hall-marks are our only guide. When absent we merely become vicious. We know what we want; we know what we ought to have; but we're too cowardly to go after it. And so are you. And so am I.
"Yours—
"Reeve."