"The reflective line. You haven't spoke for the last quarter of an hour. That's a pretty girl with the strawberry-ice coloured parasol. I say, though, old fellow, you don't suppose I've written two dozen three volume, novels without knowing something of the human mind when contemplated in relation to the tender passion. I know all about it, you know; and it's not the least use your abandoning yourself to melancholy meditation on _that_ subject. She's all your fancy painted her, &c. &c., I allow; but she's the coldest-hearted and most mercenary little scoundrel in creation, and she never can be yours. Put a clean sponge over the tablet of your brain, dear boy, and turn your attention to some body else." "What new imbecility has afflicted your feeble intellect?" asked the painter indignantly. "I don't know what you're talking of." "Oh yes, you do, dear boy, and it's the same thing that you are thinking of, and its name amongst the vulgar is Florence Crawford; but it is better known in polite society as 'Flo.'" The young painter gave a sardonic laugh. "I should be a fool to trouble my head about _her_," he said contemptuously. "So you would be a fool, old fellow; and so you are a fool, for you do trouble yourself about her. You've been on the watch for her carriage for the last half-hour, and she has not gone by; for instead of tormenting creation at large by driving here, I dare say she is torturing mankind in particular by stopping at home. Don't be an idiot, Phil, but come to Greenwich and have some dinner." "No," cried Philip, "I will stop here till she passes me by, with her insolent little affectation of not seeing me, and all the pretty tricks that constitute her fascination. You think me a fool, Sigismund; but you can never think so poorly of me as I think of myself when I find myself here day after day, while the very light I want is shining into my wretched painting room at Highbury. Do you remember what Catullus says? 'Odi et amo; quare id faciam, fortasse requiris: Nescio, sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.' Do you know that it is quite possible to love and hate the same person at the same moment? I love Florence Crawford because she is Florence Crawford. I hate her for the fatal bondage in which she holds me. I hate her for her evil influence upon my career. I hate her as the slave hates his master. Do other men suffer as I do, I wonder? or has feeling gone out of fashion, and am I behind the time? The most devoted lover nowadays only calls his betrothed a 'nice little party' and hopes the 'governor will do the right thing.' The men whom I meet take pains to advertise their contempt for any thing like real feeling; and girls of eighteen tell you with a smile that a love-match is the most preposterous thing in creation. The women of the present day are as heartless as they are beautiful; as artificial as they are charming,--the Dead-Sea fruit of civilisation, the----"