"Children!" thought Jocelyn--"Do I want them? ... No--I think not! They're all very well when they're young--really young!--two to five years old is the enchanting age,--but, most unfortunately, they grow! Yes!--they grow,--often into hideous men and women--a sort of human vultures sitting on their fathers' pockets and screaming 'Give! Give!' The prospect does not attract me! And she?--Innocent? I don't think I could bear to watch that little flower-like face gradually enlarging into matronly lines and spreading into a double chin! Those pretty eyes peering into the larder and considering the appearance of uncooked bacon! Perish the thought! One might as well think of Shakespeare's Juliet paying the butcher's bill, or worse still, selecting the butcher's meat! Forbid it, O ye heavens! Of course if ideals could be realised, which they never are, I can see myself wedded for pure love, without a care, painting my pictures at ease, with a sweet woman worshipping me, ever at my beck and call, and shielding me from trouble with all the tender force of her passionate little soul!--but commonplace life will net fit itself into these sort of beatific visions! Babies, and the necessary provision of food and clothes and servants--this is what marriage means--love having sobered down to a matter-of-fact conclusion. No--no! I will not marry her! It would be like catching a fairy in the woods, cutting off its sunbeam wings and setting it to scrub the kitchen floor!" It was curious that while he pleased himself with this fanciful soliloquy it did not occur to him that he had already caught the "fairy in the woods," and ever since the capture had been engaged in cutting off its "sunbeam wings" with all a vivisector's scientific satisfaction. And in his imaginary pictures of what might have been if "ideals" were realised, he did not for a moment conceive HIMSELF as "worshipping" the woman who was to worship HIM, or as being at HER "beck and call," or as shielding HER from trouble--oh no! He merely considered himself, and how she would care for HIM,--never once did he consider how he would care for HER.