“Not so much in what way?” asked Hood. “I suppose you mean some would say I am on the way to be an old bachelor. But I’ve discovered it isn’t half so much a matter of years as of ways. Men like me get elderly more by choice than chance; and there’s much more choice and less chance in life than your modern fatalists make out. For such people fatalism falsifies even chronology. They’re not unmarried because they’re old. They’re old because they’re unmarried.”
“Indeed you are mistaken,” said Crane earnestly. “As I say, I was surprised, but my surprise was not so rude as you think. It wasn’t that I thought there was anything unfitting about ... somehow it was rather the other way ... as if things could fit better than one thought ... as if—but anyhow, little as I know about it, I really do co
