"Lucy," he said, "doesn't love the children as much as I do. She has
allowed herself to forget how dear they are to her, so it would have to
be understood among us three that I should retain the children. You
see, I've got to keep something of what belongs to me--to keep me
going. Lucy will agree to this, because just now all she wants is new
clothes and you. There is another point upon which I feel that I must
be satisfied."
"What is that?"
"How long is your young people's infatuation for each other going to
last? If it is to be brief and evanescent, it would be absurd for me
to take a black eye. But if it is to be stable and enduring, I should
be ashamed to stand in the way of it. Knowing something of Lucy's
history, how long do you think her fancy for you will last?"
"These things are on the lap of the gods."
"Well, then, yours for her? Now, I know that my love for her, which
has been tried by fire and ice and time, will last until I die, or lose
my reason. With me it is not a question of _thinking_, but of
_knowing_. How long do you _know_ that your love for her will last?"
"That is an impossible question to answer. I think it will always
last."
"Thought won't do, Archie, on this all-important phase of the
situation, we must have the light of definite knowledge. Now, as a man
who has had many love affairs, some innocent and some not, you should
have a good working knowledge of your endurance in such matters. If
you were cast away on a desert island with a very pretty woman, you to
whom women have always been necessary, you from whose hand there has
always been some woman or other ready to eat, how long would your love
for Lucy last?"
I was amazed momentarily by his question, but it was not one which I
could answer.
"A week?" He rather shot this at me, and for a moment there was a
satiric gleam in his eye.