"No," she returned, without looking at him, "you are not eloquent, perhaps, but you are speaking the truth--and I like to hear it. I want to hear it. It is good for me. It is always good for people to hear the truth; the bare, unvarnished, unadorned truth. Go on." "If I go on," he said, still bitterly, "I shall begin to drag myself in, and I don't care to do it. It is natural that I should feel the temptation. I never knew the man yet who could talk in this strain and not drag himself in." "Drag yourself in as much as you like," she said, even fiercely, "and be an example to me." "I should be example enough if I said all I could," he replied. "Am _I_ a happy man?" She turned, and for a moment they looked into each other's eyes; his were stern, hard, and miserable. "No," she cried out, "you are not. No one is happy in the world!" And she dropped her face upon her hands as she leaned upon the mantel. "I might have been happier if I had begun right, I suppose," he said. "Begun!" she repeated. "Does any one ever begin right? One ought to begin at the end and go backward, and then one might make something of it all." "I didn't make much of it," he said. "I was not as wise as you. I began with emotions, and follies, and fires,--and the rest of it, and the enjoyment I derived from them was scarcely what I anticipated it would be. The emotions didn't last, and the follies didn't pay, and the fires burnt out--and that was the worst of all. And they always do--and that is worse still. It is in the nature of things. Look at that grate," pointing to it. "It looked different a week ago, when we had a rainy night and sat around it. We could have burned ourselves at it then if we had been feeble-minded enough to try it; we couldn't do it now; and yet a few days ago it was hot enough. The fire has burned out, and even the ashes are gone." She stooped down, picked up her fan, and reseated herself upon the sofa. She did not look quite like herself,--her face was very pale but for the two red spots Tredennis had seen on her cheeks when her display of feeling had startled him; but all at once a change had taken place in her manner. There was a sort of deadly stillness in it. "We are a long way from my temper," she said,--"a long way." "Yes," he replied, "about as far as we could get in the space of time allowed us; and we have been a trifle emotional." "And it was my fault," she continued. "Isn't it time I went somewhere cool and bracing? I think you must admit it is." "Yes," he said, "it is time. Take my advice, and go."