 know. There's no reason to suppose that things are
anything but well.«
    »I don't like her coming abroad alone; I have no faith in that plea of work.
I suspect things are not well.«
    »A cynic - which I am not - would suggest that a wish had something to do
with the thought.«
    »He would be cynically wrong,« replied Mallard, with calmness.
    »Why shouldn't she come abroad alone? There's nothing alarming in the fact
that they no longer need to see each other every hour. And one takes for granted
that they, at all events, are not bourgeois; their life won't be arranged
exactly like that of Mr. and Mrs. Jones the greengrocers.«
    »No,« said the other, musingly.
    »In what direction do you imagine that Cecily will progress? Possibly she
has become acquainted with disillusion.«
    »Possibly?«
    »Well, take it for certain. Isn't that an inevitable step in her education?
Things may still be well enough, philosophically speaking. She has her life to
live - we know it will be to the end a modern life. Servetur ad imum - and so
on; that's what one would wish, I suppose? We have no longer to take thought for
her.«
    »But we are allowed to wish the best.«
    »What is the best?« said Spence, sustaining his tone of impartial
speculation. »Are you quite sure that Mr. and Mrs. Jones are not too much in
your mind?«
    »Whatever modern happiness may mean, I am inclined to think that modern
unhappiness is not unlike that of old-fashioned people.«
    »My dear fellow, you are a halter between two opinions. You can't make up
your mind in which direction to look. You are a sort of Janus, with anxiety on
both faces.«
    »There's a good deal of truth in that,« admitted the artist, with a growl.
    »Get on with your painting, and whatever else of practical you have in mind.
Leave philosophy to men of large leisure and placid pulses, like myself. Accept
the inevitable.«
    »I do so.«
    »But not with modern detachment,« said Spence, smiling.
    »Be hanged with your modernity! I believe myself distinctly the more modern
of the two.«
    »Not with regard to women. When you marry, you will be a rigid autocrat, and
make no pretence about it. You
