"--and I'd be the very last man in the world to deny it. But still you _do_ prefer--" Then Peter broke off short and said: "My God, Bob! what's the matter?" So I think I must have had the ill-taste to have laughed a little over Mr. Blagden's magnanimity in regard to Stella's foibles. But I only said: "Oh, nothing, Peter! I was just going to tell you that travelling _does_ broaden the mind, and that you will find an overcoat indispensable in Switzerland, and that during the voyage you ought to keep in the open air as much as possible, and that you should give the steward who waits on you at table at least ten shillings,--I was just going to tell you, in fine, that you would be a fool to squander any money on a guide-book, when I am here to give you all the necessary pointers." "But I didn't mean to go to Europe exactly," said Mr. Blagden; "--I just meant to go abroad in a general sense. Any place would be abroad, you know, where people weren't always remembering how rich you were, and weren't scrambling to marry you out of hand, but really cared, you know, like she does. Oh, may be it _is_ bad form to mention it, but I couldn't help seeing how she looked at you, Bob. And it waked something--Oh, I don't know what I mean," said Peter--"it's just damn foolishness, I suppose." "It's very far from that," I said; and I was honestly moved, just as I always am when pathos, preferably grotesque, has caught me unprepared. This millionaire was lonely, because of his millions, and Stella was dead; and somehow I understood, and laid one hand upon his shoulder. "Oh, _you_ can't help it, I suppose, if all women love by ordinary because he is so like another person, where as men love because she is so different. My poor caliph, I would sincerely advise you to play the fool just as you plan to do,--oh, anywhere,--and without even a Mesrour. In fine go Bunburying at once. For very frankly, First Cousin of the Moon, it is the one thing worth while in life." "I half believe I will," said Peter.... So he was packing in the interim during which I pretended to be writing, and was in reality fretting to think that, whilst Avis was in England by this, I could not decently leave America until those last five chapters were finished. So, in part as an excuse for not scrawling the dullest of nonsense and subsequently tearing it up, I fell to considering the unquestionable fact that I was in love with Avis, and upon the verge of marrying her, and was in consequence, as a matter of plain logic, deliriously happy. "For when you are in love with a woman you, of course, want to marry her more than you want anything else. In nature, it is a serious and--well, an almost irretrievable business. And I shall have to cultivate the domestic virtues and smoke cheaper cigarettes and all that, but I shall be glad to do every one of these things, for her sake--after a while. I shall probably enjoy doing them." And I read Bettie Hamlyn's letter for the seventeenth time.... 4