"She looked like it," he went on more to himself than to me. "She had a
sweet face. I thought it _might_ be she. But it was not."
Silence fell on us.
At last I said:
"Perhaps you will be interested to hear that she and I have made it up."
"I am," he said, and his dull eyes lightened, "if you are sure she is
the right woman; really sure, I mean."
"I've known that for eleven years," I said, "but the difficulty has been
to get the same idea firmly into her head. At any rate, it's in now.
I've tattooed it on every square inch of her mind, so to speak. If I had
been let alone she would have been my downtrodden, ill-used wife, and I
should have been squandering her money for the last ten years. I shall
have to hammer her twice a day and get heavily into debt to make up for
lost time. Why don't you marry yourself, Sinclair? That is what you
want, though you don't know it; what I want, what we all want, someone
to bully, something weaker than ourselves to trample on."
"Don't I know it!" he said. "I know it well enough. But how am I to find
her?"
"Marry Lady Valenes. I'm sure you've made trouble and scandal enough in
that quarter. Now old Valenes is dead you ought to marry her; and she's
more beautiful than ever. I saw her at the opera last night."
Sinclair stared straight in front of him with his long hands on his
knees. His face, thickened and coarsened, fell easily into lines of
fatigue and ill temper.
"What is the use of Lady Valenes to me?" he said savagely. "What is the
use of any woman in the world, except the right one?"
"Well, you acted as if she was the right one when her poor jealous old
husband was alive. It's just like you to think she won't do now he is
dead and she is free."
He was silent again.
I was somewhat mollified by the remembrance that I had got Mildred, the
most elusive and difficult of women, firmly under my thumb at last, and
I said:
"The truth is, you don't know what love is, you haven't got it in you to
care a pin about anyone except yourself, or you would have married years
ago. Who do you think you're in love with now?"
"The same woman," he said wearily, "always the same."
"Then marry her and have done with it, and turn this wretched museum
into a home."
"I can't find her."
"What is her name?"
"I don't know."
"Just seen her once, I suppose," I retorted. "A perfect profile sailing
past in a carriage under a lace parasol. And you think that's love.
Little you know."
I expanded my chest. Since I had come to terms with Mildred, some thirty
hours before--and I had had a very uphill fight of it before she gave
in--I felt that I was an expert in these matters.
"Chipps," said Sinclair. (Chipps is not my name, but it has stuck to me
ever since I was at school.) "Chipps, the truth is, we are in the same
boat."
My old wound gave a sudden twinge.
"No," I said. "No. We aren't. I'm not taking any water exercise with
you, so you needn't think it. Mildred and I are walking on the
towing-path arm in arm, and I don't approve of boating for her because I
don't like it myself. So she remains on dry land with me. In the same
boat, indeed!"
"I meant, we were both in love," he said with the ghost of a smile, "if
your corkscrew advances towards matrimony can be called love. I did not
mean that we were in love with the same woman."
"I don't care if you are _now_. I did care damnably once, but I don't
mind a bit now. Do your worst."
"The conquering hero, and no mistake," Sinclair said, looking at me with
something almost like affection, and he put out his hand. "Good luck to
you, old turkey cock."