"My dear Kent," she said, "why are you so incorrigibly hard on yourself? Don't you see that you are merely the victim of the eternal impatience and illogical cruelty of youth? As far as I can understand, the charge was that you at fifty-five or so no longer act up to the ideals you had at twenty-one. Is it not so? Well, why on earth should you? You would indeed cut a rather absurd figure if you did. What are years for?" "Ah, yes," I said, "that is the case right enough, broadly speaking; but of course he had a lot of right on his side. There are many ideals of a young man which it were better not to forget." "Maybe a few, but the world is a great leveller, and every year brings with it certain modifying influences. I like a man to be his age. Twenty-one is not an age I am very partial to: it is omniscient and exorbitant and cruel; but I like a youth of twenty-one none the less. Forty makes better company: when a man knows how little he knows, and how little life holds for him, and is yet unsubdued. "My dear Kent," she went on, "do you suppose there is a living creature who would not be vulnerable to the reproaches of his dead selves--even the busiest and most philanthropical of us?" "Ah," I said, "but my theory is that I should not feel so bad about it if there was not a deal of truth. I am lazy--no one can deny that. I do nothing for any one." "Not consciously, perhaps," said the dear comforting lady, "but unconsciously, yes. You don't lose your temper. You have pleasant words for those you meet. You write kind letters. You pay cheering calls. You make no one unhappy." "Oh, that," I said, "that is all natural, and besides it pleases me to be like that." "And why not?" she answered. "You are not a saint, I know, and you never will be; you will never make any great sacrifice; but that isn't because you would shrink from it if you had to, but because it is not given to your kind to hear such calls. You are not a saint; but neither are you a humbug. It is not lovely to believe in nothing, but it is far less unlovely than to pretend to believe in something or to make money out of religion. You set an example of intellectual honesty that I personally would put in the balance against a good deal of violent charity and the higher busy-bodiness." "My dear Agnes," I said, "I did not come here to be flattered, but to arrive at the truth. You are making me as uncomfortable on this side as that young man in my dream made me on the other. I want to hit the middle way." But I knew what she was driving at; I knew that she knew that I had to be on good terms with myself if I was to unbosom without reserve. Hence her over-kindness. "Is that all he said to you?" she asked after a while. "Practically all," I said. "Nothing in the nature of advice in so many words?" "It was all advice and scolding," I said. "Yes," she persisted, "but did he say anything about--about marrying, for example?" She shot a keen glance at me.