"What's the good of anything being exquisite when you feel mouldy?"
"It may help to charm away the mouldiness. Beauty is eternal and
mouldiness only temporal. The sun will go on shining and the sea will go
on changing colour long after our pains and joys have vanished from the
world. Nature is pitilessly indifferent to human emotion."
"If so," she said, her intuition finding the weakness of my slipshod
argument, "how can it touch human mouldiness?"
"I don't know," said I. "The poets will tell you. All you have to do is
to lie on the breast of the Great Mother and your heartache will go
from you. I've never tried it myself, as I've never been afflicted with
heartache."
"Is that true?" she asked, womanlike catching at the personal.
I smiled and nodded.
"I'm glad on your account," she said sincerely. "It's the very devil of
an ache. I've always had it."
"Poor Lola," said I, prompted by my acquired instinct of eumoiriety. "I
wish I could cure you."
"You?" She gave a short little laugh and then turned her head away.
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