As well expect the bees to seek carrion instead of roses. But what do the books mean when they talk about love of men? The more men need love, the less one can love them. Write me, father. I feel as if I should know a different side of you through your letters. Later: O, I am glad I came, if only for this one thing--a little cat, a little mangled cat, gaunt, wounded, dying. I killed her--mercifully. [Sidenote: _Mrs. Montrose to Ernest Hume_] Dear friend,--Only a word, to save my honor: for we lunch and tea and dine with the world to-day. Your barbarian is more than perfect. He has become a social sovereign, sweeping all before him; and he doesn't even know it. He stands there in a circle of pretty girls and strenuous spinsters, looks at them gravely with those great soft eyes, answers their questions, and walks away in absolute unconsciousness. He says people are so kind. On the contrary, they are enraptured with his beauty and his miraculous truth-telling. And I begin to think Zoe may really be in love with him. If nobody interferes with them, perhaps they'll make a model Darby and Joan. [Sidenote: _Ernest Hume to Francis Hume_] Dear son,--So you don't love the poor! Well, don't force it. They are not invariably beautiful. Don't trouble about them until you have found out why they haven't Greek profiles, as a rule, and why they sometimes fail in expressing their lovely thoughts. Why did the cat appeal to you? Yet she wasn't beautiful. Something had maimed her. That might be the case with two-legged creatures also. I have been thinking about you a lot. In fact, for the last twenty years there hasn't been anything else for me to think about, except what is gone. And that is a chapter by itself. But I want to tell you this: if you are in a tight place of any sort, moral or financial, come to me, and I shall be grateful. I'm older, and I have lived in the world. I don't want to be a prig and hamper you with moral maxims; but if you need me, I want to be there. Moreover, I want you to grapple alone with life. That's the only way. To catch systematically at another swimmer is to weaken yourself and perhaps go down,--as I did, though not for the same reason. I went down because I never was a strong swimmer in the beginning, and then I didn't go in for training. Enough of metaphor. I've a sort of legacy, though, to give you. I was thinking last night what a shame it is that we never have a fair show with temptation, because a temptation is a thing that's never recognized until you see its back: like the hill-wives. But this you may remember; if something seems particularly enticing to you, and you say, "It wouldn't do for all the world to take this, but it will do for me," draw back. That is mirage. If you begin to shield yourself behind what the great souls have done, that, too, is mirage. The great souls are never so little as in forsaking law for license. Do not despise what convention has decreed, unless you know it to be trivial and false.