Gertrude’s emotion was gone.  She replied with cool scorn, “Very romantic indeed.  She is very fortunate.”

Trefusis half laughed, half sighed with relief to find her so self-possessed.  “It sounds like—­and indeed is—­the selfish calculation of a disilluded widower.  You would not value such an offer, or envy the recipient of it?”

“No,” said Gertrude with quiet contempt.

“Yet there is some calculation behind every such offer.  We marry to satisfy our needs, and the more reasonable our needs are, the more likely are we to get them satisfied.  I see you are disgusted with me; I feared as much.  You are the sort of woman to admit no excuse for my marriage except love—­pure emotional love, blindfolding reason.”

“I really do not concern myself—­”

“Do not say so, Gertrude.  I watch every step you take with anxiety; and I do not believe you are indifferent to the worthiness of my conduct.  Believe me, love is an overrated passion; it would be irremediably discredited but that young people, and the romancers who live upon their follies, have a perpetual interest in rehabilitating it.  No relation involving divided duties and continual intercourse between two people can subsist permanently on love alone.  Yet love is not to be despised when it comes from a fine nature.  There is a man who loves you exactly as you think I ought to love Agatha—­and as I don’t love her.”

Gertrude’s emotion stirred again, and her color rose.  “You have no right to say these things now,” she said.

“Why may I not plead the cause of another?  I speak of Erskine.”  Her color vanished, and he continued, “I want you to marry him.  When you are married you will understand me better, and our friendship, shaken just now, will be deepened; for I dare assure you, now that you can no longer misunderstand me, that no living woman is dearer to me than you.  So much for the inevitable selfish reason.  Erskine is a poor man, and in his comfortable poverty—­save the mark—­lies your salvation from the baseness of marrying for wealth and position; a baseness of which women of your class stand in constant peril.  They court it; you must shun it.  The man is honorable and loves you; he is young, healthy, and suitable.  What more do you think the world has to offer you?”

“Much more, I hope.  Very much more.”

“I fear that the names I give things are not romantic enough.  He is a poet.  Perhaps he would be a hero if it were possible for a man to be a hero in this nineteenth century, which will be infamous in history as a time when the greatest advances in the power of man over nature only served to sharpen his greed and make famine its avowed minister.  Erskine is at least neither a gambler nor a slave-driver at first hand; if he lives upon plundered labor he can no more help himself than I. Do not say that you hope for much more; but tell me, if you can, what more you have any chance of getting?  Mind, I do not ask what more you desire; we all desire unutterable things.  I ask you what more you can obtain!”