I ought to be safely and happily married, by now, to Sydney Vandeleur. He’d make a charming husband, I know; not a wish of his wife’s that he wouldn’t immediately try to gratify, from the pattern of the drawing-room carpets to where she would wish to live most of the time—Pont Street—Park Lane—or the perfectly gorgeous, old-fashioned castle with all modern conveniences that he owns in Ireland—Ballycool, they call it. Oh, for the deep sighing woods and the silver lakes over there—miles and miles from anywhere else—scented solitude, with all the drawbacks of solitude removed by motors _ad lib._—by big house-parties of amusing people as often as one chose!—Yes, I suppose I do share Miss Holt’s type of mind, but then I never pretend to be romantic, or to cherish illusions about being able to fall in love.... I should be really, genuinely fond of Sydney himself—I mean I _should_ have been. He’d be so devoted—how could one help feeling pleased to have him about, approving of everything one did and said and looked? He’s what I’d call companionable; not too lofty and masculine to take an interest in the details that mean so much more to a woman than what this country is coming to, by Gad, or what on earth McKenna or Asquith or someone is driving at when he says—(here yards, droned aloud, out of the _Times_)—or whether Kent is going to do any better this year; which is all the conversation that any married women _I’ve_ ever met seem to get out of _their_ husbands. Sydney would always know what anyone had had on at a party, including his wife. He’d be able to help her think out her frocks—and what heavenly frocks they would be! Then he’s so undeniably good-looking himself. One wouldn’t be able to help appreciating the fact that the other women would always notice it with envy, and would put it down as such a score to the credit of the one he’d married! His dark, “interesting” face with the Vandyke beard and the melancholy brown eyes seems watching me now out of the big silver frame in which he sent it to me. Yes; it certainly does hold the place of honour on the narrow painted-pine chest-of-drawers that has two handles missing, but is still spread with ivory-topped brushes, a monogrammed hand-mirror and long crystal scent flagons—relics from the wreck of the Trant fortunes!—the place of honour usually reserved in a girl’s room for the portrait of HIM—whoever “he” may be! Why did I put it there? Partly for the sake of old times, I suppose; I’ve tried to keep everything of that sort which was in my room at home.... Partly to remind myself, whenever I’ve felt extra-downhearted, that there was at least one eminently presentable young man who was accustomed to say pretty things of the face and hair that I saw reflected in the somewhat wavy looking-glass near by.... Sentiment, vanity, or a mixture of both, but _not_ the motive with which Cicely had credited me and which she’d seen fit to impart to the original.