Philip replied with characteristic frankness. "Because," he said, "it might make it easier for me to keep away from all women, like what you told me to do, if I knew the reason why I ought to." "You are beginning to find it difficult, then?" Philip, thinking of a blue cotton frock and a pair of brown eyes, nodded. "Then I will try and make it easier for you," said Uncle Joseph. "It is my plain duty to do so, for if once you get into your head the notion that woman is man's better half and guiding angel, or any sentimental, insidious nonsense of that kind, you are doomed. Your father allowed himself to cherish such beliefs, and he died of a broken heart before he was thirty. You are your father's son." "Who broke his heart?" asked Philip, looking up quickly. It was the first time that Uncle Joseph had ever mentioned his father to him. "Your mother," said Uncle Joseph bluntly. "She broke another man's heart later on, but that is another story. Perhaps the other man deserved it, but your father, above all men, did not. Have we read Tennyson together?" "Yes," said Philip. "'The Idylls of the King.'" "You remember King Arthur?" Philip nodded, beginning dimly to comprehend. "Well, your mother was Guinevere." Philip was silent for a while. Then he asked:-- "Is that why you say we must avoid all women?" "Partly. There was my own case as well. When I was well over thirty, Philip, I fell in love. I had never loved any woman before, because my whole life and soul were bound up in the regiment. I fell in love with the regiment when I joined it as a little subaltern, and I worshipped it for sixteen years. In course of time they made me adjutant, which cures most men of such predilections, but it only made me feel as proud as a hen with eight hundred chickens. Then, just as I got my final step and became commanding officer, I met a girl and fell in love with her. It was in Calcutta. She was the spoiled beauty of that season, and I was the youngest colonel in the Indian Army, so everybody thought it a very suitable match. "We did not get engaged for quite a long time, though. Oh, no! First of all, I had to learn to dance attendance. As I say, I had never been in love before, or even had any great experience of women. All my time had been lavished on the regiment. So I laboured under the delusion that if a man loved a woman, his proper course was to tell her so straight, and prove his words by devoting himself to her service. I have learned wisdom since then, but that was what I thought at the time." "What ought you to have done, Uncle Joseph?" asked Philip curiously.