' Yes, very sensible; that is why I find it so damnable. Sense is overrunning us like some horrid weed. Nobody thinks of anything except what will pay. That is what sense means. A sensible, well-balanced view—a sensible, bank-balanced view! That is what it comes to.'
Bertie Keynes whistled gently to himself a minute.
' I don't think I'll tell Gallio that,' he said; ' I don't think he would like that so much.'
Charlie laughed.
' Oh yes, he would; but you needn't tell him, since he knows it already. Well, in soda-water, I drink success to your wooing. Don't make yourself cheap.'
Bertie lit another cigarette from the stump of the one he had been smoking previously.
' If anybody else had said that, I should have been rather annoyed,' he remarked.
' You are annoyed as it is; at least, I meant you to be. It's no use arguing about it, because we really differ, and you cannot argue unless you fundamentally agree, which we do not. I'm in the minority, I know; almost everybody agrees with you. But I am old-fashioned; I have been told so this evening.'
' By——— '
' Yes, by Sybil Massington. She, too, agrees with you.'
There was silence for a minute or two.
' It's two years since her husband died, is it not?' asked Bertie.
' Yes, two years and one month. I know what you are thinking about. I asked her—at least, she saw what I meant—again this evening, but I have asked her for the last time. I suppose it is that—my feeling for her—that to-night makes me think what a horrible cold-blooded proceeding you are going to embark on. I can't help it; I do feel like that. So there's an end of it.'
