"Of course you will laugh at me," he says, "but somehow I don't mind _your_ ridicule much. It means only this, that I have just found out that she cares nothing at all for me." "_She_, being Mrs. Bohun? Well, my dear lad, if an elderly gentleman's experience is of any use to you, you may have it cheap. _I_ believe she cares a great deal for you. Lookers-on see most of the game, and I would back you against Rossmoyne any day." "You are a very good fellow," says Ulic Ronayne, "the best I know; but I understand you. You are only saying that to console me." "I am not, in faith: I say it because I think it." "I wish I could think it." "Try. 'If at first you don't succeed,' you know follow out the inestimable Watts's advice, and 'try again.' There's nothing like it: it gets to be quite a game in the long run. I thank my stars," laughing, "I have never been a slave to the 'pathetic fallacy' called love; yet it has its good points, I suppose." "It hasn't," says Ronayne, gloomily. "You terrify me," says Mr. Kelly, "because I feel positive my day is yet to come, and with all this misery before me I feel suicidal. Don't my dear fellow! don't look like that! Give her up; go and fall in love with some little girl of your own age or even younger." The "even" is offensive, but Ulic is too far gone in melancholy to perceive it. "It is too late for that kind of advice," he says: "I want her, and her only. I don't know how to describe it, but----" "There are chords," quotes his friend gravely. "Just so," says the miserable Ronayne, quite as gravely; which so upsets the gravity of his companion that it is with difficulty he conceals his ill-timed mirth. "What is that mutilated article in your hand?" he asks at length, when he has conquered his muscles. "This--eh!--oh, her card, I suppose," says Ronayne, viciously. Yet even as he speaks he smooths out the crumpled card, and regards it with a dismal tenderness as being in part _her_. "You're engaged to her for the next," says Mr. Kelly, looking over his shoulder: "what an unfortunate thing! If I were you," mournfully, "I should go home. Get ill. Do _something_." "And so let her think I'm wasting in despair because she prefers another? No, I shan't," says Ronayne, with sudden animation. "I shall see it out with her. If she chooses to cancel this dance well and good, but I shall certainly remind her she promised it to me." "Rash boy!" says Kelly, with a sigh. "As you refuse to hearken to the voice of common sense, and afflict yourself with a megrim, I leave you to your fate." So saying, he turns aside, and, having gone a step or two, finds himself face to face with Miss Beresford. "This dance is ours," he says, mendaciously, knowing well this is the first time they have met this evening. Monica laughs: to be angry with so sad a visaged man as Owen Kelly would be a cruelty.