“A little over a year ago,” said Mr. Fall, “I met the lady who is bound up in the situation on which I need your advice. I met her in an ordinary way, at a ball; and saw nothing unusual in the meeting until the evening of the following day, when I found to my surprise that throughout the day she had been inhabiting that part of a man’s mental economy which is called the ‘back-of-his-mind.’ On bringing her to the front I discovered that I was in love with her; and on ringing her up was delighted to hear that she was agreeably disposed to seeing me at her flat, at about five o’clock any afternoon. That was a year ago, and that is as far as I have got.” “You mean, she has so far refused to marry you?” I asked. “I have not asked her, Mr. Trevor. That is the point--I cannot ask her. With such as she, as you can understand, the words love and marriage are synonymous--and both, to her in particular, are offensive. I am her friend. I do not want to be, but I am. “She is a lady of birth, of deep principles and affections, which, I believe, it is the custom of the day to find wanting in women of fashion; and I find that, at the end of a year, I respect the dignity of her mind as much as I admire that of her carriage, her principles as much as her features, which are of the kind known as classical, though indeed I find in them every quality of romance. We were speaking, a moment ago, of ladies to whom a rich man is, if in no other way, financially agreeable. With this lady, that would suffice me: I would think myself well-rewarded to be allowed to marry her on any terms; but I would dare to offer her anything but the most trifling bric-à-brac--for not she to accept expensive presents--as little as I would dare to offer her my hand. I cannot even mention marriage to her, because of the damn silly thing which stands between us. Have some brandy. “Her husband had died some twelve months before I met this lady, in Rome, where he was on political business, of a sudden chill. At that time I was also in Rome; and though I had never met his wife, or even knew he was married, I had had a fairly long acquaintance with him, which had begun in the early days of the war in Paris, where he was stationed as a military officer of some consequence. I remember while I was there he won the D.S.O. for service at the front--telephone service, I gathered. “He died of his chill within twenty-four hours, and my business took me from Rome before his wife could arrive. I leave you to imagine the tragedy of her arrival in a city where, only a few years before, she had spent the happiest weeks of her life, her honeymoon, to look upon the still face of one who had left her two weeks before in the full vigour of youth and health. She has described it to me, not as a whole but in those disjointed pieces with which a sensitive mind can make a figure of tragedy vivid to a sympathetic listener, and I can see the thing so clearly that I feel it as a personal loss....”