“What I’d like to ask you, if I may,” said Giles, “is what you feel for mistress number one when mistress number two has deposed her; and what you feel for number two when you are devoting yourself to number three. You can’t feel passion for them all, at the same time, I suppose. The present lady preoccupies you. What of the others, then? Have they ceased to arouse any solicitude or interest?” “From the fact that they are gone, far less,” monsieur de Maubert owned, shifting himself now in his chair the better to contemplate his companion. “One may think of them with gratitude or regret; with pain or indifference. One may have been abandoned, or one may have found oneself ceasing to desire. A man of honour will do all in his power for the woman who has been dear to him; who may still be dear. Affection and trust may still be there, though passion has burned itself away.” “That must fill your time,” Giles muttered, “pretty considerably.” “Ah, it might”—if monsieur de Maubert felt the dryness of the young man’s tone he did not stoop to any retaliation; he was all kindliness—“but charming women are rarely in need of consolation. Is not the fact you will not face, my idealistic young friend, the fact, simply, that passion, the flame, does burn out? That is a law of life. You will not alter it with all your ascetic moralities. And shall we turn from the flame, its ardour and beauty, because it cannot burn for ever? That would be an anchorite’s error. Let us burn with it and rejoice, until it sinks. Unfortunately, the time of renewal passes,” monsieur de Maubert sighed. “Spring goes, and Summer goes, and even of Autumn there is little left. Winter approaches and one grows old.” Giles sat silent looking out to sea. The things he held to be of infinite value were invisible to monsieur de Maubert. The things monsieur de Maubert held to be of value were clearly visible to him. He saw the beauty of flame and fountain and the old paganism in his human heart echoed to the thought of love the passion. But he saw something else, that underlay them all, not contradicting, as monsieur de Maubert imagined, but completing them. What that something was it would be useless to describe. If one had come to life asking only of each moment what it gave and never what it meant, one became blinded to the meaning. Sadness fell between them sitting there, and presently monsieur de Maubert said, showing that he felt it, “Well, the sun is setting; I will go in. You are sorry for me and I am sorry for you.—Do we terminate our discussion in a mutual sympathy?” He had risen from his chair with a rather porpoise-like roll of his stout white body and stood, complete, assured, benevolent, looking down at Giles; and Giles wondered, looking up at him, whether the price one paid for such completeness was just that blindness. “I suppose there is sympathy,” he vaguely murmured. “I’m afraid it’s true, though. I think you quite as wrong as you think me.”