The marriage of Bertie Keynes and Amelie was to be celebrated at New
York towards the end of February, and bade fair to be the _comble_
up to date (not even excepting the famous pearl fishery) of Mrs.
Palmer's social successes. It was to take place in St. Luke's Church,
Fifth Avenue, and for days beforehand the ordinary services had been
altogether suspended, because the church had to be made fit to be
the theatre of the ceremony, and a perfect army of furniture-men,
upholsterers, carpenters, and plumbers occupied it. The ordinary
square-backed wooden pews were removed from the body of the church,
which was carpeted from wall to wall with purple felt, and rows of
_fauteuils_ in scarlet morocco, like the stalls of an opera-house,
occupied their places. To complete the resemblance, each chair was
marked with its particular number in its own row, and the occupants,
who gave up their tickets at the church door, retaining only the
tallies, were shown to their places, where they found in each chair
a copy of the service printed on vellum and bound by Riviere, by
scarlet-coated footmen. Similarly, the free seats in the gallery were
cleared out in order to make room for the very magnificent orchestra,
which beguiled the hours of waiting for the guests with inspiriting
and purely secular pieces, and during the choral part of the service
accompanied the choir.
In front of the altar, where the actual ceremony would take place,
there had been constructed, hanging from the roof, an immense
bell-shaped frame made of wood and canvas, which was completely covered
inside and out with white flowers, and reached from side to side
of what the reporters called the sacred edifice. It had been quite
impossible, even for Mrs. Palmer, to procure at this time of year
sufficient real flowers, and, as a matter of fact, they were largely
artificial, like everything else. Round the edge of this large bell,
suspended by invisible wires, but appearing to float in the air, were
life-size baby figures of _amorini_, made of wood and beautifully
tinted, winged, and almost completely nude, who discharged gilded
arrows from their gilded bows towards the pair who were to stand in the
centre of the bell. Numbers of others peeped from the banks of flowers
that lined the walls, all aiming in the same direction, so that the
bridegroom, one would have thought, might reasonably compare himself
to a modern St. Sebastian. Framed in these banks of flowers also were
several pictures belonging to Lewis Palmer, all bearing on what might
be called classical matrimony: a Titian of Europa and the Bull, a
Veronese of Bacchus and Ariadne, and a more than doubtful Rubens of
Leda and the Swan. Gilded harps twined with flowers leaned about in odd
corners, and the general impression was that one had come, not into a
church, but, by some deplorable mistake, into the Venusberg as depicted
in the first act of 'Tannhauser.'
The ceremony, of course, had been many times rehearsed, and for days
beforehand the dummy bridegroom's procession had crossed Fifth Avenue
(the house exactly opposite was to be Bertie's domicile for the night
preceding the marriage), and taken up its position, chalked out, at
the church door. That event was signalled to the _chef d'orchestre_ in
the gallery, who was thereupon to begin the Mendelssohn wedding-march,
and to the bride's procession, which was to start at the same moment
from Mr. Lewis Palmer's house four blocks off. This, proceeding at
walking speed, should reach the church door exactly at the conclusion
of the wedding-march, whereupon the two processions, dummy-Bertie
attended by his usher, dummy-Amelie by her bridesmaids, moved up the
church to right and left of the bell, at such a pace that the voice
which breathed o'er Eden ceased breathing as they reached their places.
Then--this was a startling innovation--Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, arm in arm,
were to have an unattended progress up the aisle to two very suitable
golden chairs, which at this moment would be the only unoccupied
places in the church, while the choir in their honour were to sing a
short hymn specially written for the occasion, and addressed to them,
beginning:
'Blessed parents here who see
This bright hour arriving.'
Then the bride and bridegroom took their places under the bell, and
the service proceeded in the usual manner. One rehearsal was rudely
interrupted by the fall of one of the wooden _amorini_ at this point,
which narrowly missed the dummy-bridegroom's head, and fell with a loud
crash, splintering itself into match-wood on, the floor of the chancel.
So another one was procured, and they were all more securely wired.
Immense baskets of white flowers were to be carried by the bridesmaids,
which they were to strew in the path of the bride both as she entered
and left the church with her husband; and from the belfry outside, as
they emerged, a shower of sham satin slippers with little parachute
wings, so that they should float in the air and sink very gradually on
to the heads of the amazed crowd, was to be discharged. These had been
tested privately, and were not used in the rehearsals.
Bertie had arrived in New York some fortnight before the marriage,
leaving Mr. Palmer, who was very much occupied, in England, to follow
a week later. Wedding-presents for both of them had begun arriving,
and were still doing so in shoals, and every day he was occupied for
several hours in writing letters of gratitude. He soon got a certain
facility at this, but one morning there arrived for him a present
which astonished him. The present itself was a charming dressing-bag
(there was nothing surprising in this, for it was the eleventh he
had received), and the donor was Mrs. Emsworth. She wrote with it a
characteristic little note, saying that she was unable to come to the
ceremony, as she was at Chicago, and begging him to forget her and not
acknowledge the gift. She was making a great success with her tour,
and was getting quite rich. Considering what had happened, this seemed
to him one of the most superb pieces of impertinence ever perpetrated.
'She was getting quite rich!' Quite so; she had made a considerable sum
lately apart from her theatrical business; she could well afford to
give him a dressing-bag.
But the impertinence of it, the irresistible impertinence! How like
the _gamin_ who puts his tongue in his cheek and says 'Yah!' He almost
laughed when he thought of it. But the laughter died at the memory
of those sickening hours in London on the day he had received the
blackmailing letter, and in a sudden spasm of anger against her, not
pausing to consider whether it was wise or not, he gave orders that the
bag should be packed up again and sent back to her at Chicago, without
word of any kind. She would understand quite well.
This incident, small though it was in itself, served to increase a
certain depression and uneasiness that beset him during this fortnight.
The appalling apparatus and dis-play which was to be made over the
wedding was intolerable to him; never before, as he read and re-read
the instructions which had been sent him as to the timing of his
own movements in what he mentally termed 'the show,' had the huge,
preposterous vulgarity of the American mind fully struck him. The
thought of what his wedding-day would be like was unfaceable, and the
unextinguishable mirth of Ginger, who had come over as his best man,
was not consoling.
'Here the bridegroom, crowned with garlands and ribands, shall be led
underneath the largest _amorino_, which at a given signal shall descend
upon his head, while the orchestra plays the Dead March from "Saul,"'
had been his comment when the accident in rehearsal happened, and
Bertie, though he laughed, groaned inwardly.
All this, however, was, as he recognised, but a temporary worry, and
did not seriously affect him. More intimately disquieting was the
perpetual sense of his nerves being jarred by the voices, manners,
aims, mode of looking at life of the society into which he was to
marry. Not for a moment did he even hint to himself that his manner
of living and conducting himself, traditional to him, English, was
in the smallest degree better or wiser than the manner of living and
conducting themselves practised by these people, traditional (though
less so) to them, American. Only there was an enormous difference,
which had been seen by him in the autumn and dismissed as unessential,
since it concerned only their manners, and had nothing to do with their
immense kindliness of heart, which he never doubted or questioned for
a moment. What he questioned now was whether manners did not spring,
after all, from something which might be essential, something, the
lack of which in one case, the presence of it in another, might make
you find a man or a woman tolerable or intolerable if brought into
continuous contact. He was going to marry this charming American girl,
whose friends, interests, companions, pursuits, were American. It was
reasonable and natural for her--indeed, it would have shown a certain
heartlessness had it not been so--that she should wish to continue to
be in touch with her friends and interests. For no human being can be
plucked up, like a plant, and have its roots buried in an alien soil;
transplant it without a lump of its own earth, and it will infallibly
wither. Nor had Bertie the least intention of making the attempt to
transplant her like that. All along he had known that the American
invasion would come to his house; he no more expected Amelie to give
up her American _milieu_ than she would have expected him to give
up his English _milieu._ Indeed, when Mr. Palmer had presented him
with a charming little _bijou_ flat in New York, he had accepted the
implication that he would pay from time to time a visit there with the
same unquestioning acquiescence.
But now in his second visit he found to his dismay that, so far from
ceasing to mind or notice the difference between the two peoples, the
difference was accentuated as far as notice went, and doubled as far
as minding went. His nerves, no doubt, were a little out of order, and
what would have scarcely affected him in a serener frame of mind was in
his present mood like the squeak of a slate pencil.
Yet behind all this, even as the sky extends for millions of miles
behind a stormy and cloudy foreground, lay his feeling for Amelie
herself. True, once in his life the passion for a woman had burned in
him with so absorbing and fierce a flame that for more than two years
afterwards he had soberly believed that he never again could feel any
touch of passion for another. His adoration for Dorothy Emsworth had
been his first _grande passion_; it was therefore probably his last,
for such a thing does not come twice. Men whose lives are morally
unedifying might doubt it, so he said to himself, but merely because
they have never experienced it at all. To them has come a succession of
strong desires, but this never. And though he did not give, nor did he
make pretence of giving, to Amelie that which Mrs. Emsworth could find
no use for, yet he gave her very honestly another way of love: he gave
her very strong and honest affection; he gave her immense admiration;
lie gave her as much, for he was of ardent nature, as many men have
ever felt. All the chords of his lyre sounded for her. But once there
had been another chord; that he could not give her, for it was gone.
Consequently, when he wondered whether continuous contact with
American _milieu_ might not prove absolutely intolerable, he did not
include in his misgivings his continuous contact with Amelie. He had
deliberately set out in the quest of a wealthy wife, and he had found
one in all ways so charming, so lovable, that the mercenary side of his
quest was out of sight. That quest, he admitted to himself, was not
a very exalted one; but as his father had pointed out, he could not,
practically speaking, marry a poor girl--at least, without marrying a
great deal of discomfort--and it was therefore more sensible to look
for his wife among wealth. He had been quite prepared, in fact, for
marrying a girl who 'would do,' provided she saw the matter in the same
light. Amelie did much more than 'do.'
Two nights before his marriage he had been to a very ingenious party,
the author and inventor of which had been Reggie Armstrong. It was
called a 'Noah's Ark' party, for he had caused his stable-yard to be
flooded, and erected in the centre of it a huge wooden building in
shape and form exactly like the Noah's arks which children play with.
It had false painted windows on it, the whole was in crude and glaring
colours, and it was approached up a gang-plank across the stable-yard.
At the door stood Reggie Armstrong on a little wooden stand, dressed
like Noah in a brown ulster, with a stiff wide-awake hat and a false
black beard, and by him the four other people who were the joint hosts.
Mrs. Palmer was one, representing Mrs. Noah, and three young New York
bachelors were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. A confused noise came from
within the ark, and as the astonished guests entered they saw that
all round the walls were cages containing real live animals. A pair
of elephants occupied the top end, a snarling tiger was in the next
cage; there were giraffes, lions, pumas, antelopes, all sorts of birds
in diminishing order of size, and at the tail a small glass-covered
box containing fleas. Shrill cries of excited admiration greeted
this striking piece of genius, and in the rather pungent menagerie
atmosphere, to the snarling of the tiger, the growling of lions, the
mewing of cats, the barking of dogs, and the neighing of the equine
species, the banquet, at which each guest sat on a wooden stool, and
ate off wooden plates, in order to accentuate the primitive nature of
the surroundings, ran its appointed course, and took rank among the
brilliant entertainments of the world.
After dinner, bridge and normality followed, and it was natural that
Bertie should find a corner as quiet as possible to have a talk with
Amelie. They had wandered together round the cages, had tried to make
themselves heard at the lion's end, but that monarch of the forest
roared so continuously that it was impossible to catch a word anyone
else was saying unless he shouted. And as their conversation was not
naturally adapted to shouting, they sought the comparative quiet of the
end which harboured the meaner insects.
Amelie had looked at the last case of all, and turned to Bertie.
'It's very complete,' she said.
'Very,' said he, and their eyes met, and both laughed.
'Now, tell me exactly what you think of it,' she went on, turning her
back on the fleas and sitting down. 'I really want to know what you
think of it, Bertie.'
Bertie looked round to see that they were alone.
'It appears to me absolutely idiotic,' he said.
She did not reply at once.
'Mamma--ah, you like me to say mother--mother was one of the hosts,'
she observed.
'I know. But you asked me what I thought.'
'Reggie's very rich,' she said. 'It doesn't make any difference to him.
I suppose a beggar would think me idiotic to wear jewels, which might
be converted into cash. At least, I suppose it is that you mean--the
senseless expenditure.'
'No; one can't say any expenditure is senseless,' said he, 'since it is
a matter of degree, a matter of how much you have to spend. If a man
spent all his capital on such an entertainment, or indeed on any, it
would be senseless, but, as you say, Armstrong is very rich.'
'What do you mean, then?'
'I mean that it is idiotic, because it doesn't give one any real
pleasure. It gives one real pleasure to see those pearls lying on your
neck.'
'Oh, but it does give pleasure, though perhaps not to you,' she said.
'Lots of people here think it's just exquisite. I suppose that means
they are idiots.'
She paused a moment.
'You've been very frank,' she said; 'I will be, too. When I see you
here, when I see that darling Ginger here, I think it is idiotic. But I
don't otherwise. You see, I've been brought up in it all. You have been
brought up differently. All my life I have been in the middle of this
-this senseless expenditure. You have been in gray old houses, and big
green parks, and quiet places, among people with low voices.'
He made a gesture to stop her. It was no use saying these things.
'No, I want to say this,' she said; 'I have meant to say it often, and
I haven't been able. I have chosen, you see--I have chosen you. And I
have seen often that we have grated on you; I have seen you thinking
how senseless this all is. But, Bertie, I can't give up my friends,
and I don't suppose I can change my nature. I can't promise to become
English. I can't promise even to try. But I love you.'
She looked up at him with those great gray eyes, and for a moment
something rose in his breast, till he almost thought that the
intolerable joy of a passion he had once felt was about to burn again
within him. But it rose, stayed short of the point, and sank again.
'I don't ask you to, Amelie,' he said. 'I am not so unreasonable or
unfair as to ask you to change. And you left to say last what was best
of all.'
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?'
'Yes, somehow right inside me I am. I think one gets a very strong,
though not at all a violent, feeling for a place where one has been
brought up. One's father was brought up there, too, you see, and one's
grandfather. The feeling isn't worth much; we have tried to sell it for
years, and whistled for a buyer in vain.'
She sighed.
'We Americans have no sense of home at all,' she said. 'Really, we all
live in hotels for preference. I don't suppose I shall ever get it, or
even understand it. Is it--is it worth having, that sense of home?'
'I don't know that it is. It is a comfortable feeling, that is all. "My
own fireside"; it is a domestic sort of joy, which rather reminds one
of Cowper's poems.'
'I shall read them,' remarked Amelie with decision. Bertie laughed.
'You will certainly go to sleep over them,' he said.
'That will be domestic too. Come, Bertie, I'm going to jabber like the
others.'
'Jabber to me.'
'I can't jabber to you. You are not jabberable. Look at me once; that
must be our good-night.'
Mr. Palmer had arrived in New York some week or so before, and had
occupied himself for a whole day over the matter of settlements.
Molesworth he had given to Amelie, had settled a million pounds
sterling on her, and on Bertie two hundred and thirty-seven thousand,
the curious exactitude of this sum being due to the fact that he had
intended to settle a quarter of a million on him, of which he had
already received thirteen thousand. He also recommended him a few
suitable investments for it, while Mrs. Palmer, after getting rid of
the first high pressure of satisfaction by sending to Amelie a perfect
packing-case of diamonds, directed a torrent of different objects,
chiefly mounted in gold, at both of them.
Bertie went home that night in a more settled and buoyant frame of
mind than had been his since his arrival in America. Never before had
he felt so certain of a happy and harmonious future. What Amelie's
feeling for him was he dimly guessed from his knowledge of what once
had been his for another, while for his part he gave her all he had
to give--admiration, affection, desire. Only--and this, as far as he
knew, was no longer among the capabilities of his nature--he did not
give her their fusion into one white flame; he only offered, as it
were, packets of the separate ingredients. But, as Sybil Massington
had said, there are many ways of love; he took the best he knew. The
knowledge of this, and the straight and honest acceptation of it by
himself, was tranquillizing, and possibly a sedative to his conscience,
for his thoughts as he strolled down Fifth Avenue on that night,
strangely warm for the earliness of the month, strayed slowly, like his
footsteps, to past years, and it would have surprised anyone who looked
on his extraordinarily youthful and untroubled face to know how very
old he was feeling as his mind drifted with the quiet strength of some
ocean-tide back, _via_ wedding-presents, to Dorothy. How absolutely she
had dominated his every thought and feeling, how completely for those
months he had ceased to have any independent will of his own, being
absorbed and melted into her. He remembered one June in particular;
they had both been in London, and day after day he had gone to see her
in her house in Curzon Street. The weather was very hot, and she had a
craze for living in nearly empty rooms; all her carpets had been taken
up, and all her floors polished--everything not essential to comfort
had been stacked in garrets, and the rooms were empty except for
flowers. Lilacs had been magnificent that year--they were her favourite
flowers--and the smell of lilac to him now meant that he lived once
again, in the flash of a moment, that month of beautiful days when he
had been so exquisitely unhappy with the unsatisfied yearning of his
first passion. All that month she had kept him in a sort of rapturous
agony of suspense, which kept ever growing nearer to certainty. Then,
at the end, to bring matters to a crisis, he had written her that
letter, and not gone near her for two days. Then, having no answer,
he went, and she laughed at him and sent him away. Well, he had paid
dearly for that letter, both in the desolating inability to care for
anything in the months that followed, and also in other ways. What it
cost him in hard cash did not trouble him. After all, he was infinitely
her debtor; it was she who had let him see (though she had plucked the
vision away again) to what height of ecstasy his own average human
nature could rise.
What must a woman of that kind be made of? he wondered to himself. Was
she so grossly stupid that she never had a glimpse of what she meant
to him, or was she so utterly hard that, having seen that, she had not
the decency anyhow to go into mourning, as it were, for him just for a
little? Stupidity he could not accuse her of; there was no one of such
lightning-like power of intuition to divine the mood of a man. No; she
must have seen it and known it, and brushed it from her, as one brushes
a fly off one's coat. For not a month after that she had left London
with Bilton, whom she never professed to care for. But he was rich,
and certainly he had done a great deal for her, for he had taken her
from her position of 'pretty woman' actress, seen her capability of
dramatic impersonation, and got her play after play where she had to
behave like herself, till now, in a certain sort of rôle, there was no
woman who touched her. Also, he had somehow made her the fashion; he
had gauged his age correctly, and given it what it wanted. He had seen
the trend of society both in England and America--seen its hardness,
its heartlessness, its imperative need of being amused, its passion for
money, and for its stage he had given it Mrs. Emsworth, an incarnation
of itself.
Yes; she was hard, hard, hard as her own diamonds, and as brilliant,
as many-faceted. Sometimes out of her, as out of them, a divinely
soft light would shine, but if you tried to warm yourself in that
mellow blaze there was no heat there; if in the excellent splendour
and softness of the light you would think for a moment that there was
a heart there, you would find only the cold, clear-cut edges. Had she
not proved it--she who, not satisfied with leading him on, with letting
him fall passionately in love with her, only to divert herself a little
in watching that storm of passion which she observed from behind her
shut window, only to draw the blind down when she had looked enough,
had even used the letter he wrote her to make money out of it? How
well she knew him, his weakness, his ineradicable instinct to save
trouble, avoid disturbances, so that, when she wrote, or caused to be
written, the letter of blackmail, she did it probably without the least
fear that she was putting herself in a dangerous position. Nor was
she--secure in the knowledge of Bertie's engagement, she was certain
to get her money. And, as no doubt she also knew well, against her he
could not have taken legal steps, for the memory of the love he once
bore her. No; she was safe, quite safe.
He let himself into his flat with his latch-key, and saw several
letters lying on the table. The English mail had come in, and Ginger,
who had got home before him, was busy with his own correspondence,
and only looked up and nodded at Bertie as he entered. For Bertie
himself there were several English letters, chiefly congratulatory, a
parcel from Tiffany's, 'by order of Mrs. Palmer,' containing a gold
sapphire-starred cigarette-case, and two or three letters from America,
one of which was type-written. For some reason, which he hardly
formulated to himself, he took it up, and examined on front and back
before opening it. Then he laid it down again, mixed a whisky and soda,
and, returning to it, tore it open. It contained one square sheet, and
ran as follows:
'DEAR SIR,
'Hearing that you are about to be married to Miss
Amelie Palmer, it may interest you to learn that we are
in possession of an autograph letter of yours to Mrs.
Emsworth. The following phrases may recall it to your mind:
'"I loved you more than ever last night, though I thought I
could not have loved you more than I really did."
'"Lilac, lilac; it reminds me of you more than any picture
of you could."
'"You know my devotion to you. For me there is no other in
the world."'
(Then, as before, followed a space.)
'Should you care to possess yourself of this, we will let
you have it for £5,000. The money should be sent to Mr.
Harold Bilton at his business office, 1,324a, Broadway, for
Mrs. Emsworth's account, by to-morrow (Tuesday) evening.
In the event of its not being to hand, we shall presume
that you do not wish to have the letter, which we shall
thereupon forward by special messenger that evening to Mr.
Lewis S. Palmer.
'Mr. Bilton, who has lately arrived in New York, is
authorized to receive the above-mentioned sum from you,
should you settle to adopt this course, but to permit no
discussion of any kind referring to the matter in hand.
'We are, dear Sir,
'Your faithful, obedient servants,
'A. B. C.'
Bertie read it through, folded it neatly up, replaced it in its
envelope, and walked across to where Ginger was sitting absorbed in a
letter.
'Any news?' he asked.
'Yes, a good deal.'
Ginger finished the sheet he was reading, got up briskly, and helped
himself to whisky.
'Noah's Ark,' he observed. 'Great and merciful God!'
'You seemed to be enjoying yourself,' said his brother.
'I was, enormously. But it's great and merciful, all the same. That's
all. Oh no, one thing more. Bertie, I think your girl is worth the rest
of this continent. News? Yes, news from Davos. Charlie is better, ever
so much better, and his nurse throughout has been Sybil. In fact, there
is going to be love in a cottage, I think. Charlie writes. He seems to
like the idea of a cottage.'
'She's going to marry him?' asked Bertie.
Ginger smiled.
'Now I come to think of it, he doesn't mention the word,' he observed.
'You're rather coarse,' remarked Bertie.
'I am. I thought it might cheer you up. You look rather down. Anything
wrong?'
'Nothing whatever.'
Ginger strolled back to his chair, put his whisky on one arm, a little
heap of cigarettes on the other, and curled himself up between them.
'The young folk are all growing up and being married,' he said. 'It
makes me feel extremely old, and it is a little uncomfortable. I've
done nothing--but that might happen to anybody--and I've felt nothing.
What is it like to feel things, Bertie?'
'Depends what they are.'
'No, I mean independently of what they are. I don't know what strong
emotion is. I don't know what it is to be carried off one's feet. I am
much interested in many things, but impersonally. Now, you--you have
adored, and you have been adored. I have sat and looked on. Does it
leave you duller, do you think, to feel a thing, and then cease to feel
it, than you would have been if you never felt it at all?'
Bertie considered this a moment.
'You never cease to feel things,' he said. 'A thing that has been
exquisitely sweet becomes bitter, and continues bitter. You taste the
jam first, and the powder afterwards.'
He turned to the mantelpiece, took up a cigarette, and then, with a
sudden trembling hand, threw it into the grate.
'And you pay for it all,' he said--' you pay over and over again.
Good-night, Ginger.'