He had gone so far that honour left him no alternative.  And he had gone thus far because it pleased him to do a thing which broke utterly with his habits and prejudices, which put him into a position such as he had never foreseen.  He was experimenting in life.

May, he told himself, behaved very well.  Never for a moment had she worn the air of invitation; a smirk was a thing unknown to her; the fact of his titular dignity she seemed wholly to disregard.  Whatever her faults he saw most of them—­she had the great virtue of unaffectedness.  Assuredly he liked her; he could not feel certain that even a warmer sentiment had not begun to breathe within him.  As for May’s willingness to marry him, why, at all events, it appeared a probability.  They had some intellectual sympathies, which were likely to increase rather than diminish.  And, if the marriage would be for him a great material benefit, he hoped that May also might profit by it.

Lady Ogram desired their union, that was clear.  That she should have made choice of him, was not easy to explain, for surely she might have wedded her niece more advantageously.  But then, Lady Ogram was no mere intriguer; he thought her, on the whole, a woman of fine character, with certain defects so obvious that they could never be the means of misleading anyone.  She was acting, undoubtedly, in what she deemed the best interests of her young relative—­and he could hardly accuse her of having made a mistake.

Pacing the room, he took up a review, opened at a philosophical article, and tried to read.

“Why does man exist?  Why does anything exist?  Manifestly because the operations of the energies of nature, under the particular group of conditions, compel it, just in the same way that they cause everything else to happen.”

He paused, and re-read the passage.  Was it satire or burlesque?  No, he saw that the writer meant it for a serious contribution to human knowledge.  In disgust he flung the periodical aside.  This was the kind of stuff that people feed upon nowadays, a result of the craze for quasi-scientific phraseology, for sonorous explanations of the inexplicable.  Why does man exist, forsooth!—­To guard his lips against the utterances of foolishness, and to be of what use in the world he may.

Before mid-day on the morrow, he would offer May Tomalin his heart and hand, offer both with glad sincerity, disregarding all else but the fact that to this point had destiny brought him.

He thought of her humble origin, and rejoiced in it.  His own family history was an illustration of how a once genuinely noble house might fall into decay if not renewed by alliances with more vigorous blood.  May Tomalin had perfect health:  she represented generations of hardy, simple folk, their energy of late recruited in the large air of Canada.  Why, had he gone forth deliberately to seek the kind of wife best suited to him, he could not have done better