‘After all,’ returned Lucius, with a faint sigh, ‘you have something better than ambition, which is only life in the future—mere fetish worship, perhaps—or the adoration of a shadow which may never become a substance. You have youth, and the power to enjoy all youth’s pleasures; that is to say, life in the present.’ ‘So I thought till very lately,’ answered Geoffrey, with another sigh; ‘but there is a new flavour of bitterness in the wine of life. Lucius, I’m going to ask you a serious question. Do you believe in love at first sight?’ A startling question at any rate, for it brought the blood into the surgeon’s toil-worn face. Happily they were still sitting in the fire-light, which just now waxed dim. ‘About as much as I believe in ghosts or spirit-rapping,’ he answered coldly. ‘Which means that you’ve never seen a ghost or had a message from spirit-land,’ answered Geoffrey. ‘Six months ago I should have called any one an ass who could love a woman of whom he knew no more than that her face was lovely and her voice divine. But as somebody—a baker’s daughter, wasn’t she?—observed, “We know what we are, but we know not what we may be.”’ ‘You have fallen in love, Geoff?’ ‘Descended into abysmal depths of folly, a million fathoms below the soundings of common sense. There’s nothing romantic in the business either, which of course makes it worse. It’s only foolish. I didn’t save the lady’s life; by stopping a pair of horses that were galloping to perdition with her; or by swimming out a mile or so to snatch her from the devouring jaws of an ebb tide. I have no excuse for my madness. The lady is a concert-singer, and I first saw her while dancing attendance upon some country cousins who were staying in town the other day, and led me like a victim to musical mornings and evening recitals, and so on. You know that I have not a passionate love of music.’ ‘I know that you had a very moderate appreciation of my violin.’