loser, he had indulged a last hope, the hope of squandering his unproductive experience on others, and thus sow, as Aunt Verona had done in his case, seeds of truth in soil which seemed propitious; but even in this rôle he could credit himself with only the most dubious success. And, with such aims, to have blundered into the bog of passion for a woman with eyes like risky amulets! Verily he was a prophet à la manque.
Despite which the old injunction still haunted him: Have faith in yourself, and nothing on earth can prevail against you. Only now, after many years of obedience to it, did he realize the sinister corollary: "If you have faith to the nth degree in yourself, the universe will virtually consist of yourself, consequently, however badly fate may serve you, you'll be able to say that nothing is prevailing against you, since, naturally, you can't prevail against yourself." Therefore, in a sense the undeniably true formula was a snare and a delusion, but even if he had been duped by it, he was past caring. In rebellious moments he could almost find it in his heart to wish that Aunt Verona had never existed. She was the only idol that had remained intact. Were she to fail him, life would indeed have been a wilderness.
Of all his misadventures, the one for which he found it least easy to excuse himself was his addiction to Germaine. He had had several months in which to review the affair, and marvelled that he could so completely have hoodwinked himself. By some freak of womanliness she had taken it upon herself to nurse him, and under a spell he had lavished on her the pent-up emotions of a lifetime devoid until then of overmastering passion. His amours had been confined to the comparatively large class of women who make the mistake of assuming that they are indispensable to the men they covet. Germaine, if vastly inferior to these women in worth, was more crafty than they. "Any woman could do as much as I have
