"I think you might have prevented it, if you had cared; but, as you say, it is too late now." "There was no way possible in which I could have prevented it," he said slowly, after an interval which seemed to strike them both as ponderous. "That was an admission I wanted," she flashed back. "You _would_ have prevented it--you would have given worlds to have prevented it." His retort came as quickly, accented by a smile: "Not a halfpenny. I make no admissions; and I have not the faintest idea of what you are driving at. I am a pure spectator. To quote yourself, I don't make marriages, nor mar them; I think too ill of life." "Ah no!" she said; "it is that you are too indolent; you disappoint me." "It is you, dear lady, who are inconsistent," he cried, laughing. "No, you disappoint me," she resumed; "seriously, my dear, I am dissatisfied with you. You will not assert yourself; you do nothing; you have done nothing. There never was a man who made less of his life." He protested laughingly: "I have had no time; I have been looking after my lungs." "Ah, you are incorrigible," she exclaimed, rising; "let us go and find Mary. I give you up; or, rather, I give myself up, as an adviser. For, after all, you are right--there is nothing worth doing in this bad world except looking after one's lung, or whatever it may be." "Perhaps not even that," said Philip, as he followed her from the room; "even that, after a time, becomes monotonous." CHAPTER XIV It occurred to Lightmark one evening, as he groped through the gloom of his studio, on his way to bed, after assisting at a very charming social gathering at the Sylvesters', that as soon as he was married he would have to cut Brodonowski's. The reasons he gave himself were plausible enough, and, indeed, he would have found himself the only Benedict among this horde of wild bachelors. The informal circle was of such recent association that, so far, no precedent for matrimony had occurred, and it was more than doubtful how the experiment might be received. In any case, he told himself, he could not be expected to introduce people like Oswyn and McAllister to his wife--or, rather, to Mrs. Sylvester's daughter. Oswyn was plainly impossible, and McAllister's devotion to tobacco so inordinate that it had come to be a matter of common belief that he smoked short pipes in his sleep. Then he had dismissed the subject; the long, pleasant holiday in Switzerland intervened, and it was only on his return, late in the autumn, that the question again presented itself, as he turned from the threshold of the house in Park Street, where he had been dining, and half unconsciously took the familiar short cut towards Turk Street. He paused for a deliberate instant when he had hailed the first passing hansom, and then told the man to drive to Piccadilly Circus.