Suddenly he felt an impulse almost overwhelming to tell her all, to tell her that, tender and strong as was his affection for her, he had known once a love that was different in kind from this, a love which he thought a man can only feel once, and when he felt it, it was not for her. Yet how could he do it? How define a moonbeam? And what good would it be when done? It might perhaps vaguely distress and disquiet her, but it could serve no other purpose, except that it would satisfy a certain demand for honesty felt by himself. The impulse, he dimly felt, was of a momentous nature; it involved principle which lies behind expediency, but though for a space it was very strong, it soon passed, and the want of practical purpose in telling her took its place. To minimize pain and to multiply pleasure was one of Bertie's maxims; suffering of any sort was repugnant to him, whether he or another was the sufferer. Such a desire is part always of a kindly nature, but when, as in his case, it is a dominant factor, one of the dominant lords of conduct, it is the sign of a nature not only kindly, but emphatically lazy--one which will always drift as long as possible, one which in a moral sense will never go to the dentist before its teeth ache, and will then not try to have them saved, but take gas and part with them. His last words to Amelie made the girl's cheek glow and her eye brighten. She loved her lover's lack of effusiveness, for to her it indicated the depth of still waters. In everything she found him as she would have him, and when he said 'you left till last the best of all,' she felt that no torrent of words, no battery of impassioned looks, could have been so convincingly genuine as the dry simplicity of his words. Like every other woman or man who has ever loved, she had imagined for herself the ideal lover, and enshrined it in some human tabernacle. To her Bertie was the one and only tabernacle wherein her love could dwell. He had told her with a limpid directness in the early days of their engagement that when he came a-wooing he had come, of set purpose, to a wealthy house, and this declaration, which would in a nature less sweet and generous than hers have prompted, in case of a lover's quarrel, the stifled whisper 'you wished to marry me for my money,' had not the most shadowy existence in her. She knew otherwise; the fortunate accident of her wealth had been no more, so she believed, than the mere master of the ceremonies who had introduced them. The completeness of his reply so satisfied her that, after a short pause, she spoke at once of other things. 'Father has settled Molesworth on me,' she said. 'He has made it my own.' 'Will you ask me there sometimes?' said Bertie. 'Yes, perhaps. Are you very fond of it?'