There were some slight eruptions in the domestic circle at Waring Park before it was decided what form the wedding was to take. As might be expected, Mr. and Mrs. Waring in no way interfered, but kept themselves carefully aloof from the whole concern. But not so Dacre.

On hearing of the engagement, he swooped down on the paternal abode, all agog to have his say in the arrangements. He was now a budding warrior, full of himself and his profession, and horribly cocksure on all subjects in heaven and on earth, a good honest affectionate creature of conventions, but with “a coarse thumb” which he wielded in a promiscuous style, and often planted sheer on the quick.

Dacre wanted a wedding that would have astonished the neighbours, and that would more than probably have been the death of the two rarified beings who had borne him, but Gwen, backed by Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes, arranged things quite her own way.

The wedding was to be as quiet as a wedding can be. Neither Strange nor Gwen were rich in relations, which simplified matters. Lady Mary must come, of course, and the old Waring uncle, and one or two creatures of an unobservant and fossilized type, not worth mentioning, besides a few of Strange’s belongings.

As for friends, when Gwen began to cast about in her mind on that subject, she found that for her, putting aside Mr. and Mrs. Fellowes, none existed. Of the girl friends who usually flock in the wake of a bride, Gwen hadn’t a vestige.

She had gone to her room to straighten her thoughts after a hot encounter with Dacre, whose carnal mind still hankered after a proper full-blown wedding, and had been making itself objectionable in a bumptious youthful style. She had lost her cool scornful calm at last, and had given him such a glance from her big eyes as had quelled the British lion in him, and had accompanied it with a lash of her able tongue.

“Oh, you are anxious to amuse yourself by importing the world and the flesh down here—here! that they may sneer at two people who, if they have brought children into the world for pure purposes of investigation, are at any rate too good to make sport for your friends. You can get your world and your flesh elsewhere, not here at my expense.”

“I never saw anyone just going to be married like you before!” said Dacre, with a dash of his old astonished terror at her.

“Probably not, your experience not being wide.”

“Strange is a million times too good for you!”

To his astonishment he got no immediate retort.

Gwen stood up, getting rather white, and went to the door. She stopped in the shadow of the threshold, and a gray shade fell on her face and made it whiter, but a sunbeam caught her hair and turned it to the orange-gold that Dacre hated.

“Fools speak the truth a great deal oftener than they have any notion of,” she said, “it is a pity that being thick-headed themselves they can’t know how it hurts.”

Now she was in her room reflecting gloomily on things in general.

“I never thought,” she said, “I never thought that by any process of reasoning I should be ashamed of the fact of having no girl friends—I used rather to pique myself on it, but upon my word I am ashamed, I am degradingly, abjectly ashamed of it, it is one of the symptoms of my disease.”

She went to the glass, and crossing her arms on a little table near, she looked at herself, laughing.

“Would anyone think it to look at me? I look so very sound and complete, and yet I am rotten at the core, a sort of Dead Sea apple. What a hackneyed order of fruit to belong to, I am not even original—ugh! I am inclined to think if I were a downright bad woman, who had sinned, sinned solidly, and all for love—I wish to Heaven I could get the feelings of one of them just for five minutes, to understand this temptation which to me is so utterly incomprehensible—Well, I really think that Humphrey would do better to marry a woman of this sort than me. It has come to a pretty pass when I—I, Gwen Waring, have taken to envying that sort of person!”

She raised her head, got to her feet, and went down and played for an hour, then she went out and walked, walked, walked, till she hadn’t a leg to stand on, and could no more think than she could fly.

About a week before his marriage, Strange ran up to London for a couple of days, but even to Gwen he did not specify the nature of his business, which altogether concerned Brydon’s launching in life.

When he reached the studio, he found things looking pretty bad. Like many a better man, if his Art didn’t drive him Brydon couldn’t drive his Art; besides, his health was below par, there were days and days when he couldn’t so much as paint a potboiler, then he starved.

He was learning Italian just now, to solace himself. Strange perceived, however, that the soft vowels hardly appealed to an empty stomach. Brydon was a haggard and distressful object, sitting with Dante on the table before him, smoking cheap tobacco, and with the ghastly beginning of a sketch crying shame on him from every corner.

“Goodness, how outrageously jolly you look! Is it engagement or ten thousand a year?”

“Oh, I’m all right, which is more than you look! Taken to shag, I see—well, I can stomach a lot, but not that. Would you mind chucking that pipe somewhere where it won’t smell, and try some of my stuff, just to oblige me? Overheated Arab and shag are the two stinks I draw the line at. Hallo!” he remarked, looking at one of the sketches.

“I am taking a holiday.”

He was going on to lie a little—but with a shrug he changed his course.

“I have to, as a matter of fact. I can’t paint, I’ve lost the way—do you ever forget the way to write?” he asked.

“Do I? The deuce I do! We all do at times, then we feel like throat-cutting or ‘Rough on Rats.’ However, I came on business. I have some spare cash and I want to invest it, and on looking round I have come to the conclusion you would be rather a good thing to put some of it into.”

“I?”

“Yes, even your beastliest daubs have something in them that saves their souls. One has to look more than once at everything you do, even if it is only to swear at it. You have capacity somewhere about you, wherever you hide it—as for drawing, you don’t know the beginnings of it! But what’s that? You can learn, it’s a mere question of swatting. If I had any doubt of your success, I wouldn’t be here to-day. I never on principle put a penny into a rotten concern, and I am here to make you a definite distinct offer, as binding on you as on me. I will defray your expenses in Paris for three years, I will give you enough to learn under the best men, and to live decently, not a farthing more,—don’t speak yet!—”

Brydon had jumped up rather wildly.

“Wait till you hear all about it—your conditions are pretty hard. In case you should die during your apprenticeship—the best of us are liable to that contingency—I shall insist on you insuring your life for an amount equivalent to that I lay out on you. If you live (the best thing you can do under the circumstances), you shall pay me back principal and interest in a given term of years, say fifteen, after you begin to sell.”

Brydon threw himself down into his chair and buried his head in his hands, a limited diet of bread and mustard had taken the starch out of him. He was soft, and his eyes were brimful of tears, he was young too, and nearly burst in his efforts to bolt them, then he lifted his head from his hands and began precipitately,

“You have given me the chance of a career, you put the world within reach of me, you trust me down to the ground, all in one breath. Look here!”

For one minute he was about to throw back the salvation waiting under his nose with most laudable self-respect, but he looked at Strange and his heart got soft again.

“I’d black your boots for you, why shouldn’t I be dependent on you? I’ll take your offer, and—and—and—”

“I told you the conditions, I shall stick to them, we don’t thank one another or get emotional in these transactions, I mean to have my money back, principal and interest, my full pound of flesh. I’m doing a trade with you—take it or leave it, as you like.”

“Do you know I’d die for you?” cried Brydon, in a burst of low-diet mawkishness.

“Die, before you’ve paid in a penny of your premium! If we can come to terms off-hand, I should like to finish up the matter at once, and start for my lawyer’s.”

Brydon got up without a word, and began to make himself decent with shaking hands. At last he found safety in a wild burst of gaiety and by the time he had his best coat on, he was bubbling over with a nervous gentle sort of fun peculiar to his kind.

When they were going downstairs he stopped, and remarked in a soft deprecatory sort of way,

“I say! I believe my heart’s next to gone. Three goes of rheumatic fever leaves that part of a fellow not worth mentioning. Won’t that make the premium pretty stiff?”

“Probably, I never thought of that. However, it’s you will have to pay the piper, not I.”

“You’re an artist in conferring favours—”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, stow that!”

“I wouldn’t take your offer, by Jove! I wouldn’t, but that I mean to repay you.”

“But I’ve already taken good care of that!”

“The money isn’t everything,” said Brydon impatiently, “there is such a thing as being proud of a fellow you’ve made, of valuing your own creation—”

“All that comes in the contract, the sense of moral elevation it gives one to run a successful concern, even if it’s only an artist, pleases the carnal mind. There was only the choice between you and a patent medicine, I’d have gone for that but that I heard at the last moment that peppermint was the active principle in its manufacture—I draw the line at peppermint—and you were the only alternative. And look here, old man—But, good Lord! See that child there? Which is more human, the child’s face or the monkey’s on the organ? Upon my word, the imp scores off the beast only in the matter of cheek pouch. Gru! how it hangs!”

Brydon shuddered.

“You always see the beastliest details! Couldn’t you keep them to yourself! I shall dream of that child for a week.”

“And yet you devour Zola? I had begun something, what was it? Oh,—if I were you I should walk gingerly as soon as you strike Paris pavement; there is something in it that drives fellows mad. London is a fool to it! It’s a bad investment for any man, but it would spoil your work for a twelvemonth, if it didn’t give me my premium sooner than I want it. That weak heart of yours, Charlie, if you work the thing properly, should be as good as a family chaplain to you, and it isn’t every man that can boast of as much.”

“Talk of utilitarianism,” sighed Brydon, “it is to be a struggle, then, between my natural instincts and my game heart. I wonder which will win?”