But it certainly would have made this difference--that I should not have
been reduced, in pursuit of pleasant images, to disinter a buried episode
of more than a quarter of a century ago. I should have found
entertainment more--what shall I call it?--more contemporaneous. I
should have had a wife and children, and I should not be in the way of
making, as the French say, infidelities to the present. Of course it's a
great gain to have had an escape, not to have committed an act of
thumping folly; and I suppose that, whatever serious step one might have
taken at twenty-five, after a struggle, and with a violent effort, and
however one's conduct might appear to be justified by events, there would
always remain a certain element of regret; a certain sense of loss
lurking in the sense of gain; a tendency to wonder, rather wishfully,
what _might_ have been. What might have been, in this case, would,
without doubt, have been very sad, and what has been has been very
cheerful and comfortable; but there are nevertheless two or three
questions I might ask myself. Why, for instance, have I never
married--why have I never been able to care for any woman as I cared for
that one? Ah, why are the mountains blue and why is the sunshine warm?
Happiness mitigated by impertinent conjectures--that's about my ticket.
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