"I don't read novels myself," he explained. "But I demand the best, and place myself unreservedly in the bookseller's hands. Generally they know what is worth reading." Prudence confided in him her trouble over the cycling veto, anticipating sympathy, and was disappointed in him because he sided with the family in their objection to her riding. He did not approve of cycling for ladies, he said. That struck her as a very antiquated prejudice. Cycling for women was so general until motoring became more popular. "If father would give me a car," she said, "I should prefer it." "Better have a pony carriage," he advised, "if you intend driving it yourself. Safer and pleasanter, really." "How stodgy!" she said, and laughed. "That's much too slow." It was regrettable, she reflected, that he was so elderly; and she wondered what he had been like as a young man, and why he had never married. The answer to that question was that, until he met her as a woman, he had never known love. He knew it now. And he recognised it for the one passion of his life--a disturbing passion on account of the disparity in their ages. This disparity he recognised as a barrier, but a barrier which might be overcome. It is a barrier which many people surmount and not always unsuccessfully. None the less the undertaking is attended with risks, and the risks are worthy of consideration. The ideal marriage is based on equality in essential things. Contemporaneous ideas and sentiments lend themselves most readily to sympathy. Without sympathy and understanding a perfect relationship cannot exist. The individual of forty who fails to recognise this fact deserves no compassion when he strikes the rocks ahead. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.