Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/42

30 become, with the steam-engine, the electric telegraph, compulsory education (falsely so-called), constitutional government, and the supremacy of commerce. So the elder ones died, dissolved in tears; and the younger ones migrated by evaporation to Neptune."

"Dear me, dear me," she marvelled. "How extraordinary that we should just have happened to light upon a topic about which you appear to have such a quantity of special knowledge! And now,” she added, bending her head by way of valediction, “I must be returning to my duties."

And she moved off, towards the palace.

And then, for three or four days, he did not see her, though he paid frequent enough visits to the feeding-place of the carp.

"I wish it would rain," he confessed to Hilary. "I hate the derisive cheerfulness of this weather. The birds sing, and the flowers smile, and every prospect breathes sodden satisfaction; and only man is bored."

"Yes, I own I find you dull company," Hilary responded, "and if I thought it would brisk you up, I’d pray with all my heart for rain. But what you need, as I’ve told you a thousand times, is a love-affair with a red-haired woman."

"Love-affairs are tedious repetitions," said Ferdinand. "You play with your new partner precisely the same game you played with the old: the same preliminary skirmishes, the same assault, the same feints of resistance, the same surrender, the same subsequent disenchantment. They’re all the same, down to the very same scenes, words, gestures, suspicions, vows, exactions, recriminations, Rh