Ah, happiness, happiness; a little dull, some one had wisely said, when you looked at it from outside. An affair of duets at the cottage piano, of collecting specimens, hand in hand, for the _hortus siccus_. A matter of integrity and quietness. “Ah, but the history of the young woman who was married four years ago,” exclaimed Gumbril with clownish rapture, “and remains to this day a virgin—what an episode in my memoirs!” In the enchanted darkness he had learned her young body. He looked at his fingers; her beauty was a part of their knowledge. On the tablecloth he drummed out the first bars of the Twelfth Sonata of Mozart. “And even after singing her duet with the Don,” he continued, “she is still virgin. There are chaste pleasures, sublimated sensualities. More thrillingly voluptuous,” with the gesture of a restaurant-keeper who praises the speciality of the house, he blew a treacly kiss, “than any of the grosser deliriums.” “What is all this about?” asked Mrs. Viveash. Gumbril finished off his glass. “I am talking esoterically,” he said, “for my own pleasure, not yours.” “But tell me more about the beard,” Mrs. Viveash insisted. “I liked the beard so much.” “All right,” said Gumbril, “let us try to be unworthy with coherence.” They sat for a long time over their cigarettes; it was half past three before Mrs. Viveash suggested they should go. “Almost time,” she said, looking at her watch, “to have tea. One damned meal after another. And never anything new to eat. And every year one gets bored with another of the old things. Lobster, for instance, how I used to adore lobster once! But to-day—well, really, it was only your conversation, Theodore, that made it tolerable.” Gumbril put his hand to his heart and bowed. He felt suddenly extremely depressed. “And wine: I used to think Orvieto so heavenly. But this spring, when I went to Italy, it was just a bad muddy sort of Vouvray. And those soft caramels they call Fiats; I used to eat those till I was sick. I was at the sick stage before I’d finished one of them, this time in Rome.” Mrs. Viveash shook her head. “Disillusion after disillusion.” They walked down the dark passage into the street. “We’ll go home,” said Mrs. Viveash. “I really haven’t the spirit to do anything else this afternoon.” To the commissionaire who opened the door of the cab she gave the address of her house in St. James’s. “Will one ever recapture the old thrills?” she asked rather fatiguedly as they drove slowly through the traffic of Regent Street. “Not by chasing after them,” said Gumbril, in whom the clown had quite evaporated. “If one sat still enough they might perhaps come back of their own accord....” There would be the faint sound as it were of feet approaching through the quiet. “It isn’t only food,” said Mrs. Viveash, who had closed her eyes and was leaning back in her corner. “So I can well believe.” “It’s everything. Nothing’s the same now. I feel it never will be.”