What steps he intended to take, he went on, he could not say. He had not decided. All that he had decided was not to make the case public, and to go away. London had become unbearable; he shrank equally from the spoken condolence of his friends and from their tactful avoidance of the subject. He had long wanted to visit the Argentine, where his services were, as it chanced, in demand at the moment in connexion with some big dispute, and in the future of which he was a firm believer, and he should take this opportunity of throwing some of his care on to the bosom of the sea, the great simplifier. But in order to do that with a comparatively assured mind Rose must be left in good hands. This brought him to the purpose of his visit, which he could assure me had not been to force me to listen to his tale of woe at all. Would I, to put it briefly, would I let him leave Rose with me? He should feel absolutely at peace if I would. There was no one else whom he could trust in the same way. He had many relations, it is true, but—well, there it was. And somehow there was a kind of fitness in it. I had brought up his own Rose, who was the most beautiful creature he should ever meet—here he almost broke down and I admired him for it—and, well, and—here he broke down completely. I confess to being deeply touched by the confidence implied in his request; and I shivered as I remembered my unfounded suspicion that he was likely to hold me to blame, at any rate in part, for his tragedy. It seemed to me as high a compliment as could be paid, that he, with his poor torn feelings and his pride all in rags, should be willing to place his daughter under the care of the man whose possible laxity had been responsible for her mother’s defection. But the question would have to be considered very thoroughly. The responsibility would be very great, nor was I in some ways as well fitted to become a little girl’s foster-father as I had been, twenty years ago, when the other Rose had come to me. I was then young enough to be an active playmate and I was flexible. I had now become not only older but a man of fixed habits, many of which would have to be broken. Could I break them, and did I want to break them? For Rose’s child (could she have engineered so complicated a business as having one without the assistance of anyone else) I would do anything, but this was Rose’s-and-Eustace’s child, and that made so much difference. I could be sorry for Eustace, but never could I like him, and supposing that some of his least admirable characteristics manifested themselves now and then in his offspring, might I not become actively antipathetic? Human nature can be so unreasonable, so unjust, and I pretended to no immunity from illogical aversions.