"Ted, I am going to hurt your feelings. I don't quite know how to tell you what I think of her. She's not good enough for you, to begin with----" "I know she's not intelligent. She can't help that." "And she's not affectionate. Oh, Ted, forgive me! but she doesn't love you--she can't, it's not in her. She loves no one but herself." "She _is_ a little selfish, but she can't help that either. It makes no difference." "So I fear. And then she's years older than you are, and you can't marry for ages; don't you see how impossible it all is?" Her voice thrilled with her longing to impress him with her own conviction. His passion was wrestling with a ghastly doubt, but it was of the kind that dies hard. "Of course it's quite impossible now"--neither he nor Katherine considered the question of Audrey's money, they had never thought of it--"but, as she said herself, in five years' time, when she's thirty and I'm twenty-five, the difference in our ages won't be so marked." "It will be as marked as ever, even if your intellect grows at its present rate of development." "I've admitted that she's a little deficient in parts; and, as you justly observe, stupidity, like death, is levelling. We should suit each other exactly in time." "Ah, if you can see that, why, oh why, did you fall in love with her?" "_She_ asked me that this afternoon. I said it was because she was so clever. It was because I was a fool--stupidity came upon me like a madness--I wish to heaven I'd never done it. It's played the devil with my chances. I was sitting calmly on the highroad to success, with my camp-stool and my little portable easel, not interfering in the least with the traffic, when she came along like a steam-roller, knocked me down, crushed me, and rolled me out flat. I shall never recover my natural shape; and as for the camp-stool and the portable easel--these things are an allegory. But I love her all the same." Katherine laughed in spite of herself, but she understood the allegory. Would he ever recover his natural shape? To that end she was determined to make him face the worst. "Ted, what would you do, supposing--only supposing--she were to fling you over for--for some one else?" "I should blow my brains out, if I had any left. Verdict, suicide while in a state of temporary insanity." "Suicide of a genius! That would be a fine feather in Audrey's cap." "She always had exquisite taste in dress. Besides, she's welcome to it--or to any little trifle of the kind."