"No, Alison was different. And Alison has been dead near twenty years. And God help me! I no longer regret even Alison. I should have been more truthful in talking with poor Harry Heleigh. But, as always, the temptation to be picturesque was irresistible. Besides, the truth is humiliating.
"The real tragedy of life is to learn that it is not really tragic. To learn that the world is gross, that it lacks nobility, that to considerate persons it must be in effect quite unimportant,--here are commonplaces, sweepings from the tub of the immaturest cynic. But to learn that you yourself were thoughtfully constructed in harmony with the world you were to live in, that you yourself are incapable of any great passion--eh, this is an athletic blow to human vanity. Well! I acknowledge it. My love for Alison Pleydell was the one sincere thing in my life. And it is dead. I do not think of her once a month. I do not regret her except when I am tipsy or bored or listening to music, and wish to fancy myself the picturesque victim of a flint-hearted world. Which is a romantic lie; I move like a man of card-board in a card-board world. Certain faculties and tastes and mannerisms I undoubtedly possess, but if I have any personality at all, I am not aware of it; I am a mechanism that eats and sleeps and clumsily perambulates a ball that spins around a larger ball that revolves about another, and so on, _ad infinitum_. Some day the mechanism will be broken. Or it will slowly wear out, perhaps. And then it will go to the dust-heap. And that will be the end of the great Duke of Ormskirk.
"John Bulmer did not think so. It is true that John Bulmer was a magnanimous fool,--Upon the other hand, John Bulmer would never have stared out of an ugly window at an uglier landscape and have talked yet uglier nonsense to it. He would have been off post-haste after the young person who is 'beautiful as an angel and headstrong as a devil.' And afterward he would have been very happy or else very miserable. I begin to think that John Bulmer was more sensible than the great Duke of Ormskirk. I would--I would that he were still alive."
His Grace slapped one palm against his thigh with unwonted vigor. "Behold, what I am longing for! I am longing for John Bulmer."