“In addition to everything else, you are completely healthy, and I believe you are a stranger to the dentist; your hair is not getting prematurely thin. Really, Leonard, I do not think that there can be in the whole country any other young man so fortunate.” “Yet you refuse to join your future with mine.” “Perhaps, if there were any misfortunes or drawbacks one might not refuse. Family scandals, now---- Many noble houses have whole cupboards filled with skeletons: your cupboards are only filled with blue china. One or two scandals might make you more human.” “Unfortunately, from your point of view, my people have no scandals.” “Poor relations again! Many people are much pestered with poor relations. They get into scrapes, and they have to be pulled out at great cost. I have a cousin, for instance, who turns up occasionally. He is very expensive and most disreputable. But you? Oh, fortunate young man!” “We have had early deaths; but there are no disreputable cousins.” “That is what I complain of. You are too fortunate. You should throw a ring into the sea--like the too fortunate king, the only person who could be compared with you.” “I dare say gout or something will come along in time.” “It isn’t good for you,” she went on, half in earnest. “It makes life too pleasant for you, Leonard. You expect the whole of life to be one long triumphal march. Why, you are so fortunate that you are altogether outside humanity. You are out of sympathy with men and women. They have to fight for everything. You have everything tossed into your lap. You have nothing in common with the working world--no humiliations--no disgraces--no shames and no defeats.” “I hardly understand----” he began, disconcerted at this unexpected array of charges and crimes. “I mean that you are placed above the actual world, in which men tumble about and are knocked down and are picked up--mostly by the women. You have never been knocked down. You say that I do not understand Love. Perhaps not. Certainly you do not. Love means support on both sides. You and I do not want any kind of support. You are clad in mail armour. You do not--you cannot--even wish to know what Love means.” He made no reply. This turning of the table was unexpected. She had been confessing that she felt no need of Love, and now she accused him--the wooer--of a like defect. “Leonard, if fortune would only provide you with family scandals, some poor relations who would make you feel ashamed, something to make you like other people, vulnerable, you would learn that Love might mean--and then, in that impossible case--I don’t know--perhaps----” She left the sentence unfinished and ran out of the room. Leonard looked after her, his face expressing some pain. “What does she mean? Humiliation? Degraded relations? Ridiculous!”