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“Will you let me try?” she asked, still smiling.

“By all means–especially if it is to be only a preliminary canter,” I answered, rashly.

“What do you mean?” she inquired, turning quickly upon me.

“Oh–nothing. You might try my paces with a view to quarreling in the future. I cannot imagine how you are going to do it. You will have to resort to immediate and direct abuse.”

“No. I will only say that if you do not like your life, it is your own fault. How can a man of your age talk of being melancholy, or of the hollowness of existence? Are you consumptive? Are you subject to hereditary insanity? Are you deaf, like Aunt Bluebell? Are you poor, like–lots of people? Have you been crossed in love? Have you lost the world for a woman, or any particular woman for the sake of the world? Are you feeble-minded, a cripple, an outcast? Are you–repulsively ugly?” She laughed again. “Is there any reason in the world why you should not enjoy all you have got in life?”

“No. There is no reason whatever, except that I am dreadfully unlucky, especially in small things.”

“Then try big things, just for a change,” suggested Miss Lammas. “Try and get married, for instance, and see how it turns out.”

“If it turned out badly it would be rather serious.”

“Not half so serious as it is to abuse everything unreasonably. If abuse is your particular talent, abuse something that ought to be abused. Abuse the Conservatives–or the Liberals–it does not matter which, since they are always abusing each other. Make yourself felt by other people. You will like it, if they don’t. It will make a man of you. Fill your mouth with pebbles, and howl at the sea, if you cannot do anything else. It did Demosthenes no end of good, you know. You will have the satisfaction of imitating a great man.”

“Really, Miss Lammas, I think the list of innocent exercises you propose–“

“Very well–if you don’t care for that sort of thing, care for some other sort of thing. Care for something, or hate something. Don’t be idle. Life is short, and though art may be long, plenty of noise answers nearly as well.”

“I do care for something–I mean, somebody,” I said.

“A woman? Then marry her. Don’t hesitate.”

“I do not know whether she would marry me,” I replied. “I have never asked her.”

“Then ask her at once,” answered Miss Lammas. “I shall die happy if I feel I have persuaded a melancholy fellow creature to rouse himself to action. Ask her, by all means, and see what she says. If she does not accept you at once, she may take you the next time. Meanwhile, you will have entered for the race. If you lose, there are the ‘All-aged Trial Stakes,’ and the ‘Consolation Race.'”

“And plenty of selling races into the bargain. Shall I take you at your word, Miss Lammas?”

“I hope you will,” she answered.

“Since you yourself advise me, I will. Miss Lammas, will you do me the honor to marry me?”

For the first time in my life the blood rushed to my head and my sight swam. I cannot tell why I said it. It would be useless to try to explain the extraordinary fascination the girl exercised over me, or the still more extraordinary feeling of intimacy with her which had grown in me during that half hour. Lonely, sad, unlucky as I had been all my life, I was certainly not timid, nor even shy. But to propose to marry a woman after half an hour’s acquaintance was a piece of madness of which I never believed myself capable, and of which I should never be capable again, could I be placed in the same situation. It was as though my whole being had been changed in a moment by magic–by the white magic of her nature brought into contact with mine. The blood sank back to my heart, and a moment later I found myself staring at her with anxious eyes. To my amazement she was as calm as ever, but her beautiful mouth smiled, and there was a mischievous light in her dark-brown eyes.