"It's--so," said Bretton very quietly. With a single glance at Daphne he turned to Kaire [207] again, struck another match, lit another cigarette. "Love isn't an overcoat, you know, Kaire," he said. "It's underclothes! The White Linen of Life! And there seems to be something--peculiarly and particularly offensive to a fastidious body--in being proffered personal linen which still retains even the scent--let alone the sweat of a previous relation . . . . The Almighty, our Mothers, and our Ministers, may forgive us our slovenly dinginess or our careless laundrying, being all of them more or less Museum Collectors and interested inherently in our historical values or the original fineness of our weave-or the ultimate endurance of our warp and woof. But the Almighty--and our Mothers--and our Ministers--don't have to _wear_ us, Kaire! Not next to their skins! Don't have to sleep with us--wake with us--live with us--die with us!" The hand that held the cigarette trembled very slightly, the eyes that glanced back again at Daphne were dark and poignant with pain. "You are perfectly right, Kaire! No man knows better than I the mess that a chap may make of his life--nor how poor the fabric that I, personally--in [208] the common experience of men--will have to offer the woman I love . . . . very worn it will be, very frayed!--but at least it has been cleansed in the bitter tears of regret!" "Is that--so?" sneered Kaire. "It is--so," persisted Bretton. "And God knows that neither Piety nor Wit nor anything in the world but sheer Good Luck pulled me ashore in time. But, like other half-drowned men, I suppose, I had neither wit nor time to choose my landing. Rocks, sands, valleys, mountains, all looked like miracles to me. So, mistaking austerity for purity, and severity for integrity, I married a woman to whom the slightest caress was a liberty, and marriage itself a sacrilege. In being sorry for myself I have not altogether, I trust, failed to be sorry for her. We are made as we are made. But it is only natural I suppose--that I should like my daughter to be a Good Lover. I believe in Good Lovers. But no one can make a good lover who is mated to a poor one!" "I'll risk the kind of Lover I am!" cried Kaire. "_I won't_! affirmed Bretton. [209] "There are also some things that I won't do!" grinned Kaire. "I won't release your daughter from her promise!" "She doesn't love you, you know?" warned Bretton. "Even granting perfectly frankly that you have excited her wonderment, 'wonderment' isn't love. We're all of us put together on a more or less hasty plan, I suppose, but just because some forgotten basting thread gives us an odd tweak now and then doesn't mean, you know, that the actual seams of our existence are ripping any." "I don't care what anything means," said Kaire, "as long as Daphne has given me her promise to marry me."