He left the sentence hanging in the air, as if afraid to finish it, and neither this modesty nor the yearning tenderness of his accent was lost upon the girl. “As you say, there is no one else.” “But--but there might be,” suggested Rollinson, who was strongly possessed by the insane delusion of the lover that all men must needs worship his lady. “Bertha! If you are going to learn to love me, make haste to be kind. I am horribly unreasonable. I see a rival in every man you speak to, dance with, smile at. Until my probation is over I should like to depopulate the world you move in. I want, at least, to be rejected on my own demerits, not because of the merits of another man!” Bertha regarded him attentively, still with that serious, candid air. “Indeed, I will try,” she murmured, and for the moment he wisely said no more. Rollinson had been a thoughtful youth, who early conceived of old age--which he thought began between forty and forty-five--as one of the most desirable periods of life. “Patience! Afterwards,” he had said to himself during the storm and stress, the confusion and uncertainty of youth--“afterwards, when I am old, when all this fermentation has ceased, when I know what I think, what I feel, what I want and can do, how glorious life will be!” And in accordance with this conception, as he advanced in years, he looked confidently for the subsidence of the swelling tide of his prejudices, passions, partialities, and for the emergence of reason undefiled as the second Ararat upon which the long-tossed and buffeted ark of his mind might rest. To say the least, he was taken aback when, in the midst of those ripe years, whose fruitage he had hoped to gather in great peace, he came again upon tempestuous days. In brief, when past forty, it befell him to love as he had never loved before, and with an unrest far exceeding that of youth, for he could not fail to see that the chances were by rights against him. “Good Lord!” said Rollinson, when he faced his emotional condition, “for the heart there _is_ no afterwards!” But, happily, Bertha did not think so ill of his chances for happiness as did he himself, and he ventured to hope, although he was terrified by her calmness and her ability to see from all sides the subject he could only see from one. Bertha respected his learning and revered his wisdom--which is learning hitched to life--and envied his experiences, and exulted in his grasp of people and things, and in his breadth of vision. She thought such a grip upon life as he possessed could only come with years. And compared to these things the disadvantages which also come with years seemed trifling. Obesity, baldness, and a touch of ancestral gout were the penalties he had to pay for being what he was. On the whole, the price did not seem too high. She felt quite sure that she would ultimately accept him, and that they would marry and live happily ever after.