"I make a joke of life?" she cried; she was half in earnest now; "how is that possible unless one has realized its sadness? You enthusiasts who have never laughed at anything, and are always talking about taking life seriously, you have never gone deep enough to see that it _is_ serious. If you had, you would only laugh for the rest of your life, because--it would be impossible after you had once realized _that_ to keep serious and live." For the first time in his life the musician did not want to argue. "Don't you see that I love you as I have never loved any one before, as I could never love any one again?" he said humbly. "How am I to believe that?" she retorted sharply, and he flushed slightly. "Is that quite fair of you? Have I not been always perfectly open with you? I told you the story of my marriage the first time I ever met you, and I have told you to-day about poor little No--about Miss Bisley. Could any man do more?" "No," she said carelessly, "but you might very well have done less,--I mean, the whole town told me about Miss Bisley directly I came home from abroad, though, except for the name, the two accounts do not tally in the least. But then, nothing in Relton shrinks in the washing." The musician flinched, and tried another tactic. "Then I suppose you merely think I am a brute who is taking advantage of your loneliness to profess an affection for you which he does not feel? A man has to pay a big penalty for your friendship, Lady Joan." She would not have let him see it for the world, but she felt she had gone a little too far, and a rapid change came over her mood. "It is not that; I am afraid of myself, I think," she said with a sigh, and she looked down at his boots. His face lighted up. "Then--" he began eagerly; but she put up her hand with a gesture of warning. "No, no, you mistake me; I do not believe that it is in me to love anybody--for long. My friends say it is because I have never known a mother's love; but if my parents had lived they would simply have made me fight with them through their tiresome affection for me. Now, I know what you are going to say--that I am speaking with the spirit of the age, or some of that twaddle I have heard before. If I am, it is you who have taught it me, for I don't allow anybody else to mention the age to me; I am sick of it and the people who make their living out of abusing it. I could never love you, or anybody. That's the truth, and--don't you believe me?" "Not quite," he said, and looked at her in an unpleasantly direct way. "Besides," she said, rather awkwardly, catching at another loophole of escape, "there is this Norah Bisley: how am I to know that she will not come back?" He shook his head, and she smiled at the guilelessness of his reply. "I don't think it is possible. You see, I wrote three times--" "The letters may have gone astray."