'I'm not going to say anything of her,' he went on, the rich, round voice softening. 'There isn't any need, since you all know her. Besides, though you have all come here to-night--why, I can't for the life of me tell--to wish us good luck in the future, it isn't so much of the future I'm thinking as of the past. It has been so happy, thanks to you all. And it's over. That is the worst of it. I suppose it isn't quite what a man is expected to say on these occasions; but the ladies--God bless them!--would, I'm sure, agree, if they could only be made to understand that marriage is the end of a man's youth. It doesn't alter the case at all that it may be the end of the woman's also, or that we get something that may be as good in exchange. What has that to do with the past?--the merry, careless past, which I've enjoyed so much, and to which I'm now saying good-bye. Well, Heaven help those who say good-bye to it without a solid reason, or have a sneaking intention of not really saying good-bye to it at all? for their lines are in evil places. And that sounds like a sermon, and you never heard Dan Fitzgerald preach before, and you never will again. It isn't only that I'm off with the morning to the other end of the world--to a new world, if it comes to that, worth this old one and the past and all of you put together, if you'll excuse my saying so--it is because even if I were stopping here I should be out of the old life as surely as if I were dead and buried. To begin with, I shall have to think of every penny I spend, so that I may have enough to pay for paradise! The world is full of paradoxes for me to-night; and I'm the greatest of them all myself; for I don't want to say good-bye, and yet I wouldn't miss having to say it for the world. Then it seems to me to-night as if I'd solved the puzzle; and there's Doveton--the old bachelor--grinning as if he knew I was a fool, and that I was making the biggest mistake of my life. I don't think so--I don't think I ever shall think so; I hope not, anyhow. And so, good-bye to you--goodbye! And may none of us, married or single, live to know the pain of a "heart grown cold, a head grown grey--in vain!"' Down the disordered table with its litter of glasses and flowers, its atmosphere heavy with the odours of dinner and drink, a hush lay for a second; not more. Then some one laughed, and with a roar of applause the general tone--varying from concert pitch to normal diapason according to the taste of the owner--struck into the old chorus; the refrain which, touching as it does the lowest and the highest ideals of humanity, has provoked more mixed sentiment and emotion than any other in the language: '_For he's a jolly good fel-low. For he's a jolly good fe-el-low_.' Love, admiration, assent. But to what? That lies in the creed of the singer. And Dan, as the chorus went swaying and surging about in the discords and harmonies, was left alone, silent--as it were on a pinnacle.