Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/56

44 have the same features, organs, dimensions, with but a hair's-breadth variation; the same needs, instincts, propensities; the same hopes, fears, ideas. One man's meat is another man's meat; one man's poison is another man's poison. We are as like to one another as the leaves on the same tree. Skin us, and (save for your fat) the most skilled anatomist could never distingushdistinguish [sic] you from me. Women are a pack of samenesses; but, hang it all, one has got to make the best of a monotonous universe. And this particular woman, with her red hair and her eyes, strikes me as attractive. She has some fire in her composition, some fire and flavour. Anyhow, she attracts me; and — I think I shall try my luck."

"Oh, Nunky, Nunky," murmured Hilary, shaking his head, "I am shocked by your lack of principle. Have you forgotten that you are a married man?"

"That will be my safeguard. I can make love to her with a clear conscience. If I were single, she might, justifiably enough, form matrimonial expectations for herself."

"Not if she knew you," said Hilary.

"Ah, but she doesn't know me and shan't," said Ferdinand Augustus. "I will take care of that."

And then, for what seemed to him an eternity, he never once encountered her. Morning and afternoon, day after day, he roamed the park of Bellefontaine from end to end, in all directions, but never once caught sight of so much as the flutter of her garments. And the result was that he began to grow seriously sentimental. "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai!" It was June, Rh