"Yes?"

"But, Jim, you--you----Oh, what's the use!"

"Of course it sounds unusual, to you," admitted Stainton, "but to me it is all simple enough."

Holt took a deep pull at his gla.s.s.

"Oh, it's simple, all right," said he. "It's so simple it's artless."

Stainton's iron-grey brows drew together. "I don't understand."

"Of course it sounds unusual to you," admitted Holt. "If you did understand, you wouldn't do this thing. You don't understand; you can't, and that's just the pity of the whole business." Like all men of his stripe, he gathered both conviction and courage from the sound of his own voice. "You've lived in the desert and such places like a what-do-y'-call-it--anchorite--and had opium-dreams without the fun of a smoke."

Stainton stiffened.

"I didn't ask your advice," said he.

"You wanted it," Holt ventured.

"I don't mind your giving it if it amuses you," said Stainton, shrugging his shoulders; "but I am quite clear on one point: you are what most city-bred men are: you have looked so hard after happiness that, when you see it, you can't enjoy it."

"Am I?" The liquor was burning in Holt's eyes. "Perhaps I am, but that rule works two ways. Some fellows don't look hard enough. I don't know, but I imagine if a man never uses his eyes he goes blind."

Stainton, who had carried a few of his books to the West with him, wanted to quote Cicero: "_Sis a veneris amoribus aversus; quibus si te dedideris, non aliud quidquam possis cogitare quam illud quod diligis._"

All that he said, however, was:

"I have tried to live in such a way that I may be fit to look a good woman in the face."

"What man alive is fit to do that?" Holt answered.

Stainton did not directly reply, and Holt, somewhat put out by the merely silent opposition, found himself a little at a loss.

"You don't want to tie up with a kid," he nevertheless endeavoured to proceed. "That's what it really amounts to. What you want is a woman, a ripe one. If you're going to live in the swim, you need somebody that can teach you the stroke. You want somebody with the _entree_, somebody that can run your house in the Avenue or the Drive and isn't afraid of a man in livery."

"Put my servants in livery?" Stainton was indulgent, but he added: "To make clowns of your fellow men--really I think that's a sin against G.o.d."

"All right," said Holt; "but you're in love with an idea. Not even a girl, mind you: an idea. Well, you mark my words: it's a cinch that two people who haven't anything to do but tell each other how much they love each other are bound, soon enough, to exhaust the subject and begin to want something else to talk about."

"Now it is you who don't understand." Stainton did not know why he should argue with this city waster, unless it was because he had for so long had no chance to speak of these things to anyone. But he went on: "There ought to be love in every marriage, but marriage wasn't ordained for love only."

"Lucky for it," said Holt, "for if it were it would be a worse swindle than it is now, and that's going some. What _was_ it ordained for?

Babies?"

"Yes."

"What? There are fifty of 'em born outside of marriage right here in New York every day in the year. When Romeo makes eyes at Juliet, he isn't thinking babies."

"He only doesn't know that he is, that's all."

"Suppose you're right," said Holt; "that's all the more reason why a fellow should want to beget a baby instead of marrying one. Look here, Jim: I'm not b.u.t.ting in on your affairs because I like to; but I know what I'm talking about when I say you can't play this lead without spoiling the game."

"Do you mean," asked Stainton, "that Miss Stannard's guardians will object?"

"Hardly. Her guardians are the Newberrys."

"Then what do you mean?"

Holt interpreted.

"I mean," he said, "that you won't be happy with a child for a wife, and that a child won't be happy with you for a husband."

Stainton started to rise from the table. Then he seemed to think better, seemed to recall his old and brief, but firm, friendship with the Holt of Holt's western days, and sat back in his chair.

"Jim," continued Holt, "you're actually in earnest about all this marrying-talk, aren't you?"

"So much so," replied Stainton, frowning, "that I don't care to have you refer to it in that way."

"Oh, all right. I beg pardon. I didn't intend to make you sore. Only it won't do, you know. Really."

"Why not?"

"I've just been telling you why not. Difference in ages. Too great."

Stainton's face became graver. He leaned forward toward Holt, pushed his gla.s.s aside and, with his heavy forefinger, tapped for emphasis upon the board.

"I told you," he said, "that your best New York doctor has p.r.o.nounced me to all intents and purposes only twenty-five years old."

"O, h.e.l.l!" said Holt.

Stainton's brows drew close together.

"I mean what I say," he declared.

"Of course you do. But did the doctor-fellow mean what _he_ said?"

"Why shouldn't he? I paid him to tell the truth. He probably thought I suspected some illness, so that, from his point of view, there would have seemed more money in it for him if he had said I needed treatment--his treatment."

"Perhaps. But medicine isn't an exact science yet--not by several thousand graveyards full."

"What of that? I didn't need the doctor's a.s.surances--really. I have my own feelings to go by."

"Yes, I know. I've heard all that before. Many a time. A woman's as old as she looks, but a man's as young as he feels--per_haps_."

"A man is as old as his arteries--and a few other units of his physical economy."

"And a girl," said Holt, significantly, "is no older than the--what is it?--units of _her_ physical economy."

Stainton bit his under lip.