He was sitting with his hands between his knees, looking out absently over the waves below. He did not stir, but she could see a smile struggling with his gravity. "My dear Belle! The banns haven't been called." "Perhaps we could afford a special license on the easy-purchase system by monthly instalments," she suggested quite as gravely. "But really, Philip, when I see you--" "Growing so old; don't be afraid of the truth, Belle. Am I very bald?" "Bald! No, but you are grizzling fast, Phil; and when the fact is brought home to me by seeing it afresh, I ask myself why you shouldn't have a wife and children." "I could, of course; there are plenty of young ladies now on the frontier. Oh, Belle! I thought we had settled this long ago. You can't leave Jack; you wouldn't with a clear conscience, if you could. I can't leave the regiment; I shouldn't like to, if I could. Is not that an end of marriage from our point of view? Besides," he turned to her now with a smile full of infinite tenderness, "I am not at all sure that I do want to marry you. When perfection comes into a man's life, can you not understand his being a little afraid--" "Philip!" "Not of you, dear; but this love of ours seems better than we are ourselves,--than _I_ am, certainly. Then marriage, as I take it, is for young people, and what they call Love is the bribe held out by Nature to induce her thoughtless children to undertake a difficult duty. The sweet isn't unwholesome in itself, but that is no reason why we should call it manna from heaven and say it is better than plain, wholesome bread and butter." "You are growing detestably didactic in your old age, Phil. When you come to the gatekeeper's house I shall have to amend your ways." "You forget I shall be incurable then; but you are right. I am fast becoming a real old crusted military fogy, and of all fogies that is the worst. You can't think what a nuisance I am to the boys at mess; they depute a fresh one to prose to the Colonel every night." "I know better. When young Cameron came home sick he had a very different story." "Young Cameron isn't to be trusted. To begin with he had had a sunstroke, and then he proposed marrying on subaltern's pay." "Well, you can't expect the world to give up falling in love because you don't approve." "Let it fall by all means; only let us call things by their proper names. You and I, Belle, know the trouble which follows on the present confusion. And if we, eminently respectable people, suffered much, many must suffer more. Many! Why the question, 'Is Marriage a Failure?' fills up the interstices of conversation left between the Rights of Labour and Home Rule. How can it be anything but a failure when people are taught to expect impossibilities? when they are told that love is better than duty? Thank heaven, we never were in love with one another!" "Never?"