“Of course not,” he said contemptuously. “Life is what it is, and you can’t alter it. And as we are only just so big and have only just so many years in which to get over a limited surface of this mighty complication called Life, all we can do is to keep our eyes open, and pick out here and there what appeals to our taste most strongly, swallowing the disagreeable majority as philosophically as possible. When you know the world—and yourself—you can’t have ideals, and the sooner you quit wasting time thinking about them the sooner you begin to enjoy life. And remember that we live but from day to day—we may be a cold cadaver to-morrow. Life is a game of chance. To set up ideals is as purposeless as to waste this life preparing for an impossible next. Omar expressed it better than I can when he said:— “‘To-morrow? Why, to-morrow I myself may be With yesterday’s seven thousand years.’” “You have certain ideals though,” said Patience. “You are intellectually ambitious; and you say that you never run after a merely pretty face, and never wasted time on any sort of woman unless she had brains; and the men at the office say that you are scrupulously square in money matters. So that I can’t see that you are altogether without ideals.” “Those are mere matters of taste and worldly sense. I aim for nothing that is impossible. When I think I want a thing I set about to accomplish it. If I find that it is impossible I quit without further loss of time. You don’t suppose I have an ideal woman, do you? How can any man that knows women?—although he may often succumb to a happy combination. When I was exactly twelve my Sunday School teacher forestalled any inclination I might have developed to idealise woman. I met her once after I was grown, by the way, and it did me good to tell her what I thought of her. That is where you women have the advantage of us. It is so long before you know man at all that after you do it is hard work making him over as he is. The woman never lived that understood man by intuition. That is the reason a woman so seldom has any fascination but that of mere youth until she’s pretty well on to thirty. You, of course, have had an exceptional experience, but you are a good deal of a kid yet.” XIV