The Argosy — page 265: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Secret of the Sea. 251 had had, and little love-smarts in plenty. Many a pleasant face had haunted his dreams for a night or two, but never for longer. In his writing-desk were two or three crumpled gloves, a ribbon or two, and at least half a dozen cartes-de-visite : tokens all, as he sometimes said to himself, of how hard he had tried to love, of how often he had fancied himself to be in love, and of the very short space of time it had taken him to discover either what an ass he had made of himself, or what an ass some girl had made of him. Such mementoes are not without a certain amount of instructiveness. Gerald looked upon them in the light of warnings. “How terrible and strange it is to think,” he said to himself one day, “that each one of these gages d'amour represents a most foolish moment in my life, a moment that might have been the turning-point of my existence: such a moment as has been the turning-point of many a man’s existence! How well one knows the history of such relics! A pair of bright eyes, a waltz, a glass of champagne, a glove or a ribbon dropped by accident or design; or else a moonlight ramble capped with some poet’s soft nonsense, and a little hand nestling timidly under your arm. Then comes a pressure of the tiny hand, an appealing glance into the bright eyes, a whispered word, and unless your enslaver does not really care for you—in which case nothing but your vanity suffers—your fate is sealed, and the chances are that you wake up next morning to find that, for the sake of an hour’s foolish romance, you have bound yourself for life to a person for whom in your heart you don’t care the price of a box of cigars.” So moralized Gerald, as he took his relics out of their resting-place for the last time and dropped them quietly, one by one, into the fire. Without a single pang he saw them flare and shrivel into ashes. Let the dead past bury its dead. No doubt ever clouded his mind as to the strength and reality of that passion which in these latter days had taken possession of his heart. It was no mere will-o'-the-wisp, to be followed with passionate footsteps through brake and morass, but the Planet of Love itself, serene and beautiful: the lodestar of his life and fortunes shining down on him at last with a light that nothing but death could ever again eclipse. Since that first meeting with Eleanor he had made it his business to see as much of her as the exigencies of his position would allow of his doing. Except when they had company, he generally dined with Sir Thomas and Lady Dudgeon. He had the happy knack of being able to select topics of conversation that had an interest for both of them. He did his best to please them, and he succeeded, simply that he might be able thereby to see more of Miss Lloyd than he could otherwise have hoped to do. The peculiar circumstances under which , Eleanor and he had first met had done more to break the ice between them than a month of ordinary intercourse would have done; besides COnnichoc SS (CO)