Some eight or nine years ago, when he had first met May, he had as nearly fallen in love with her as his constitution permitted; and he had been nettled at finding himself in a financial position that was, to say the best of it, rather fluctuating. He knew he was going to have Chartcote, but aunts of sixty frequently live to remain aunts at eighty. May had never shown any particular interest in him, but he attributed her indifference to the natural and selfish female desire to acquire a wealthy husband. As it was impossible for him to marry at that period in his life, he adopted that theory of marriage most likely to shed a cheerful light upon his compulsory bachelorhood. He maintained that the natural man tries to escape marriage, as it is incompatible with his "freedom," and is only "enchained" after much persistent hunting down by the female, who makes the most of the conventions of civilisation for her own protection and profit. He was able, therefore, at the age of forty-two to look round him and say: "I have successfully escaped--hitherto," and to feel that what he said was true. But now he was no longer poor. He was an eligible man. He was also less happy than he had been. He had lived at Chartcote for some interminable weeks! He had found it tolerable, only because he was well enough off to be always going away from it. But now he had again met May, free like himself, and if possible more attractive than she had been eight years ago! He had met her and had found her at the zenith of womanhood; without losing her youth, she had acquired maturer grace and self-possession. Had there been any room for improvement in himself he too would have matured! The wealth he had acquired was sufficient. And now the question was: whether with all his masculine longing to preserve his freedom he would be able to escape successfully again? This was why he was giving a lingering glance in the mirror, where his external personality was, as it were, painted with an exactness that no artist could command. Should this blond man with the beard and the stiff hair, below which lay a splendid brain, should he escape again? Boreham stared hard at his own image. He repeated the momentous question, firmly but inaudibly, and then went away without answering it. Time would show--that very day might show!