"What did you do all day?" "I was at my tailor's this morning; after lunch I went to Lord's." "And you call that life?" "Well, it passed the time." "With all the world at your feet?" "I have been busy enough in my day." "Yes, in a Buenos Ayres counting-house. Did you make money?" "I have enough." "Enough for what?" "For security; for my simple needs, and a little over." "Your simple needs! Heavens, man, you make me furious. How dare you speak to me of your simple needs and your scrubby little club routine--me, with the old abundant programme still on my lips! Can't you put yourself in my place for a moment and think what it means to see every fine generous resolve gone wrong? How do you suppose it can strike me--yourself at twenty-one, remember--to see such a miscarriage of idealism as you! You, who began so well, and promised to rise so high above the petty ruck; you, who were famous for your fearlessness as a critic of conventions and shams. And now, how do I find you?--an old, timid, selfish clubman, poring over the papers in a cold sweat for fear of losing any of the dirty little dividends that give you the hogwash you call comfort and security. Security! To think that I should ever hear you use such a word. It was not in your dictionary in my day. "Oh yes," he hurried on, "I know you're a gentleman, and all that; but that's what's wrong. You weren't going to be a sterile gentleman, you were going to be a real man; you were going to help put things right. And now what do I find you doing?" He paused for a moment. Then he continued his catechism. "Why didn't you come home now and then from Buenos Ayres?" "I couldn't, there was no one else to take my place." "Why didn't you throw it up, then?" "One does not throw things up." "No, one does not. One clings to one's little pettifogging habits and one's little mean salary, even in a foreign land, while all that is most real and beautiful and best worth doing is beckoning one away. Prudence dictates the course, expediency controls. And so you turned your back on England and your home for over thirty years. Friends and relations died; it was nothing to you." "It was everything to me." "And yet you did not come home. You went on languidly and happily driving some one else's quill in that state of apathetic indolence which denationalisation seems to carry with it, and quietly allowed all that was best in life to slip from you. I know, because I was there." "Then why didn't you stop me!" I cried. "Ah! I have touched you," he said; "you have admitted all. I did not stop you because those are the things we have to do without help. I am here to-night not on your account in the least, you have passed beyond my interest, but on account of some one else. Why aren't you married?" he said swiftly. I began to see what was coming. "Why?" he repeated. "Have you never loved?" "Not sufficiently, I suppose." "Don't you love any one now?" "How dare you?"