“In those days they often fascinated me, as no doubt the Cafe Royal and its life fascinates Beryl to-day. The hectic appeals to something in youth, when there is often fever in the blood. Strong lights, noise, the human pressure of crowds, the sight of myriads of faces, the sound of many voices--all that represents life to us when we are young. Calm, empty spaces, single notes, room all round us for breathing amply and fully, a face here or there--that doesn’t seem like life to us then. Beryl dines with me alone sometimes. But she must finish up in the evening with a crowd if she is near the door of the place where the crowd is. And you must not tell me you never like the Cafe Royal, for if you do I shall not believe you.” “I do like it at times,” he acknowledged. “But to-night, sitting here, the mere thought of it is almost hateful to me. It is all vermilion and orange colour, while this . . .” “Is drab!” “No, indeed! Dim purple, perhaps, or deepest green.” “You couldn’t bear it for long. You would soon begin longing for vermilion again.” “You seem to think me very young. I am twenty-nine.” “Have you ceased to love wildness already?” “No,” he answered truthfully. “But there is something there which makes me feel as if it were almost vulgar.” “No, no. It need not be vulgar. It can be wonderful--beautiful, even. It can be like the wild light which sometimes breaks out in the midst of the blackness of a storm and which is wilder far than the darkest clouds. Do you ever read William Watson?” “I have read some of his poems.” “There is one I think very beautiful. I wonder if you know it. ‘Pass, thou wild heart, wild heart of youth that still hast half a will to stay--’” She stopped and held her fan a little higher. “I don’t know it,” he said. “It always makes me feel that the man or woman who has never had the wild heart has never been truly and intensely human. But one must know when to stop, when to let the wild heart pass away.” “But if the heart wants to remain?” “Then you must dominate it. Nothing is more pitiable, nothing is more disgusting, even, than wildness in old age. I have a horror of that. And I am certain that nothing else can affect youth so painfully. Old wildness--that must give youth nausea of the soul.” She spoke with a thrill of energy which penetrated Craven in a peculiar and fascinating way. He felt almost as if she sent a vital fluid through his veins. Suddenly he thought of the “old guard,” and he knew that not one of the truly marvellous women who belonged to it could hold him or charm him as this white-haired woman, with the frankly old face, could and did. “After all,” he thought, “it isn’t the envelope that matters; it is the letter inside.”