To-night it passed contentedly under the walls of the town, singing a very sleepy little song on its way, and playing games with the moonlight and the stars. Here the noise of the fair was hidden and everything was very still and peaceful. The footsteps of the two men were loud and clear. The night air had straightened Maradick’s brain and he was more at peace with the world, but there was, nevertheless, a certain feeling of uneasiness, natural and indeed inevitable in a man who, after an ordered and regulated existence of many years, does something that is unusual and a little ridiculous. He had arrived, as was, indeed, the case with so many persons of middle age, at that deliberate exclusion of three sides of life in order to grasp fully the fourth side. By persistent practice he had taught himself to believe that the other three sides did not exist. He told himself that he was not adaptable, that he had made his bed and must lie on it, that the moon was for dreamers; and now suddenly, in the space of a day, the blind was drawn from the window before which he had sat for fifteen years, and behold! there were the stars! Then Tony began again. It had been said of him that his worst fault was his readiness to respond, that he did not know what it was to be on his guard, and he treated Maradick now with a confidence and frankness that was curiously intimate considering the length of their acquaintance. At length he spoke of Alice Du Cane. “I know my people want it, and she’s an awful good sort, really sporting, and the kind of girl you’d trust to the end of your days. A girl you’d be absolutely safe with.” “Do you care about her?” said Maradick. “Of course. We’ve known each other for years. We’re not very sentimental about it, but then for my part I distrust all that profoundly. It isn’t what you want nowadays; good solid esteem is the only thing to build on.” Tony spoke with an air of deep experience. Maradick, with the thought of his own failure in his mind, wondered whether, after all, that were not the right way of looking at it. It had not been his way, fifteen years before; he had been the true impetuous lover, and now he reaped his harvest. Oh! these considering and careful young men and girls of the new generation were learning their lesson, and yet, in spite of it all, marriage turned out as many failures as ever. But this remark of the boy’s had been little in agreement with the rest of him; he had been romantic, impetuous, and very, very young, and this serious and rather cynical doctrine of “good solid esteem” was out of keeping with the rest of him. “I wonder if you mean that,” he said, looking sharply at Tony.