"Most men who have lived and worked and suffered," he went on, "come to know before they die that without a great and true love in their lives, their work is wasted, and their sufferings are in vain. But there are exceptions, of course. Some get on very well without love at all, and perhaps these are the most fortunate." "I am sure they are!" she said decisively. He picked up two or three of the rose-petals her restless fingers had scattered, and laying them in his palm looked at the curved, pink, shell-like shapes abstractedly. "Well, they are saved a good deal of trouble," he answered quietly. "They spare themselves many a healing heart-ache and many purifying tears. But when they grow old, and when they find that, after all, the happiest folks in the world are still those who love, or who have loved and have been loved, even though the loved ones are perhaps no longer here, they may--I do not say they will--possibly regret that they never experienced that marvellous sense of absorption into another's life of which Mrs. Browning writes in her letters to her husband. Do you know what she says?" "I'm afraid I don't!" and she smothered a slight yawn as she spoke. He fixed his eyes intently upon her. "She tells her lover her feeling in these words: '_There is nothing in you that does not draw all out of me._' That is the true emotion of love,--the one soul must draw all out of the other, and the best of all in each." "But the Brownings were a very funny couple," and the fair Lucy arched her graceful throat and settled more becomingly in its place a straying curl of her glossy brown hair. "I know an old gentleman who used to see them together when they lived in Florence, and _he_ says they were so queer-looking that people used to laugh at them. It's all very well to love and to be in love, but if you look odd and people laugh at you, what's the good of it?" Helmsley rose from his seat abruptly. "True!" he exclaimed. "You're right, Lucy! Little girl, you're quite right! What's the good of it! Upon my word, you're a most practical woman!--you'll make a capital wife for a business man!" Then as the gay music of the band below-stairs suddenly ceased, to give place to the noise of chattering voices and murmurs of laughter, he glanced at his watch. "Supper-time!" he said. "Let me take you down. And after supper, will you give me ten minutes' chat with you alone in the library!" She looked up eagerly, with a flush of pink in her cheeks. "Of course I will! With pleasure!" "Thank you!" And he drew her white-gloved hand through his arm. "I am leaving town next week, and I have something important to say to you before I go. You will allow me to say it privately?"