I shivered. I was tired and hungry, and the reaction after the
emotions of the night had left me dispirited.

I was engaged to be married. An hour back I had proposed to
Cynthia Drassilis. And I can honestly say that it had come as a
great surprise to me.

Why had I done it? Did I love her? It was so difficult to analyse
love: and perhaps the mere fact that I was attempting the task was
an answer to the question. Certainly I had never tried to do so
five years ago when I had loved Audrey Blake. I had let myself be
carried on from day to day in a sort of trance, content to be
utterly happy, without dissecting my happiness. But I was five
years younger then, and Audrey was--Audrey.

I must explain Audrey, for she in her turn explains Cynthia.

I have no illusions regarding my character when I first met Audrey
Blake. Nature had given me the soul of a pig, and circumstances
had conspired to carry on Nature's work. I loved comfort, and I
could afford to have it. From the moment I came of age and
relieved my trustees of the care of my money, I wrapped myself in
comfort as in a garment. I wallowed in egoism. In fact, if,
between my twenty-first and my twenty-fifth birthdays, I had one
unselfish thought, or did one genuinely unselfish action, my
memory is a blank on the point.

It was at the height of this period that I became engaged to
Audrey. Now that I can understand her better and see myself,
impartially, as I was in those days, I can realize how indescribably