COLONEL MORLEY.--"What is that? you have left nothing worth the having to
ask for."

DARRELL.--"Nothing! I have left all! I ask some one whom I can love;
love better than all the world,--not the /mariage de convenance/, not the
/mariage de raison/, but the /mariage d'amour/. All other marriage, with
vows of love so solemn, with intimacy of commune so close,--all other
marriage, in my eyes, is an acted falsehood, a varnished sin. Ah, if I
had thought so always! But away regret and repentance! The future alone
is now before me! Alban Morley! I would sign away all I have in the
world (save the old house at Fawley), ay, and after signing, cut off to
boot this right hand, could I but once fall in love; love, and be loved
again, as any two of Heaven's simplest human creatures may love each
other while life is fresh! Strange! strange! look out into the world;
mark the man of our years who shall be most courted, most adulated, or
admired. Give him all the attributes of power, wealth, royalty, genius,
fame. See all the younger generation bow before him with hope or awe:
his word can make their fortune; at his smile a reputation dawns. Well;
now let that man say to the young, 'Room amongst yourselves: all that
wins me this homage I would lay at the feet of Beauty. I enter the lists
of love,' and straightway his power vanishes, the poorest booby of
twenty-four can jostle him aside; before, the object of reverence, he is
now the butt of ridicule. The instant he asks right to win the heart of
a woman, a boy whom in all else he could rule as a lackey cries, 'Off,
Graybeard, that realm at least is mine!'"

COLONEL MORLEY.--"This were but eloquent extravagance, even if your beard
were gray. Men older than you, and with half your pretensions, even of
outward form, have carried away hearts from boys like Adonis. Only
choose well: that's the difficulty; if it was not difficult, who would be