Oliver Wyse was lucky in that he had more truth on his side than many a lover can boast. Her life was starved of great things; she was in a sense wasted; her youth and beauty, things that pass, were passing with no worthy scope; where the sweetest intimacy should be, there was none; her marriage was a misfit. It could not be denied that she had contrived, in spite of these unpromising facts, to be fairly happy. But that was before her eyes were open, he hinted, before she had looked on the transfiguration, before she knew her true self. She supposed that must be so, though with an obstinate feeling that she might manage to be fairly happy again, if only he and his transfiguration would go away--or if she might just look at it, and wonder, and admire, without being committed to the drastic steps which lovers expect of the transfigurations they have made. Is it absolutely necessary to throw your cap over the mill just because somebody at last really understands and appreciates you? That was a question Bernadette often asked herself--quite fretfully. The action was threatened by so many penalties, spiritual and worldly. She had her shrewdness also, increased by the experience of a beauty, who has seen many aspire in golden ardour, sigh in piteous failure, and presently ride away on another chase with remarkably cheerful countenances. If this after failure, what after success? Men were tempestuous in wooing; what were they when the fight was won? She knew about her husband, of course, but she meant real men--so her thoughts perilously put a contrast. "Have you often been in love, Sir Christopher?" she asked the old Judge one day as he sat in her little den, sipping tea and smoking cigarettes. He was a lifelong bachelor. "Often, Bernadette." "Now, tell me," she said, leaning towards him with a knitted brow and a mighty serious look. "Of all the women you've been in love with, is there anyone you now wish you'd married?" "Yes, certainly. Two." "Out of how many?" "I don't know. A matter of double figures, I'm afraid." Smiling, he put an apologetic note into his voice. "They're not the two I was most desperate about, Bernadette." "Of course I should very much like to know who they were." "But since, of course, that's impossible, let us continue the discussion in the abstract." "Why didn't you marry them--well, one of them, I mean, anyhow?" "Is that the abstract? Well, one of them refused." "To marry you?" "She refused, Bernadette. Now please go back to the abstract." "Without asking about the other?" "I'm afraid so." "All right. I don't think I care so much about desperation myself, you know." "Seen too much of it probably!" His old blue eyes twinkled. "I could have fallen awfully in love with you, Judge. Do you often think about those two?" "Oftener about the others." "That's very perverse of you." "The whole thing's infernally perverse," said the Judge.