He walked to his club in a very thoughtful mood. Here, no doubt, was the natural solution of his difficulties. But with the prospect of that easy escape came a passionate wave of protest, the protest of masculine youth at paying the price. He had not the faintest idea that he could fall in love with Mabel Cutting; and were her millions an adequate compensation for the loss of his precious liberty? He felt that a man’s youth should last until thirty. Time enough then for shackles: wife—and children! He blushed angrily at the thought. This cursed question of money! If his brother would settle two thousand a year on him, he would not consider matrimony with the most beautiful girl that walked.
And deep down in his heart he heard a murmured demand for the woman by the Isar. Was this woman, perchance, his mate? He stopped, appalled at the thought, in the middle of Piccadilly, and was nearly run over by a hansom cab. To what end? The difference in their ages meant nothing to him, but he could not ask the various diplomatic circles of the world to accept Margarethe Styr. Nor was there the least probability that she would renounce her career to keep house for him and devote her talents to the advancement of his own. Even if she loved him—and did she?—how could he demand such a sacrifice? Society would be a poor substitute for art, for the adulation of the multitude. Moreover, there was the question of money again. She might possess small fortune, but it would not go far in his world. To permit her to remain on the stage he would not consider for a moment. He would neither abandon his career nor would he live on a woman’s earnings. To marry a girl with a large inheritance was one thing, but to loaf about while his famous wife sang to a public ignorant of his very name, that neither might want for the luxuries to which they were accustomed—good God!
He wondered, as he turned abruptly from the door of his club and strolled down into St. James’s Park, that the idea of marrying Margarethe Styr had postulated itself. It had not even occurred to him before. He had looked forward to seeing her as often as he could manage, to keeping her in his life, but not even to being her lover. Did he love her? Had he loved her during those enchanting months, and been too contented, too occupied, to understand? Had she purposely refrained from exercising those seductions of which she must be passed mistress, because she knew that love would devastate the lives of both? For a moment he seemed to be peering over the edge of a round wall into the great wells of human nature. He had a passing impression that Margarethe Styr was Nature herself, that in her bosom were all the mysteries, the secrets, the treasures of life, and that they were his, whether he could ever take them or not.