"I may be wrong, Penelope. But remember, my wife was a Davenant, nearer than Nan by one generation to Angèle de Varincourt. And she was never happy! Though I loved her, I couldn't make her happy."
"I should have thought you would have made her happy if any man could," said Penelope gently.
"My dear, it's given to very few men to make a woman of temperament happy. And Nan is so like my dear, dead Annabel that, if for no other reason, I should always wish to give her what happiness I can." He paused, then went on thoughtfully: "Unfortunately money won't buy happiness. I can't do very much for her--only give her what money can buy. But even the harmony of material environment means a great deal to Nan--the difference between a pert, indifferent maid and a civil and experienced one; flowers in your rooms; a taxi instead of a scramble for a motor-'bus. Just small things in such a big thing as life, but they make an enormous difference."
"You of all men surely understand a temperamental woman!" exclaimed Penelope, surprised at his keen perception of the details which can fret a woman so sorely in proportion to their apparent unimportance.
St. John hardly seemed to hear her, for he continued:
"And I want to give her freedom--freedom from marriage if she wishes it. That's why I stipulate that the income ceases If she marries. I'm trying to weight the balance against her marrying."
"But why? Surely love is the best thing of all?"
"Love and marriage, my dear, are two very different things," commented St. John, with an unwonted touch of cynicism. After a moment he went on: "Annabel and I--we loved. But I couldn't make her happy. Our temperaments were unsuited, we looked out on life from different windows. I'm not at all sure"--reflectively--"that the union of sympathetic temperaments, even where less love is, does not result in a much larger degree of happiness than the union of opposites, where there is great love. The jar and fret is there, despite the attraction, and love starves in an atmosphere of discord. For the race, probably the mysterious attraction of opposites will produce the best results. But for individual happiness the sympathetic temperament is the first necessity."