It was Irene Merriam’s hour of greatest content when she looked into her heart for a fugitive desire and smiled at finding none. And this was a source of all the more comfort, because she was a woman who gave unsparingly of herself to life, and made large claims upon life in return. She sat in a leathern armchair by the fireplace, listening to the talk of her two companions, who were sitting by the dinner table over their coffee. Now and then she interposed a remark, but lazily, preferring to watch the play of expression on their faces, to dream dreams about them, and to realise her own happiness. This after-dinner scene was a familiar one; familiarity had made it dearer. She had grown to regard it as an essential in her scheme of life, like sleep and food and raiment.

Of the two men, one was her husband, Gerard Merriam; the other, his life-long, intimate friend. They had chummed together at school, at the University; had joined the same Inn of Court, and had been called to the bar together; and in spite of wide divergence of taste and character, had remained in close relationship to the present day.

It was on the homeward voyage, after a Long Vacation trip to India, that they had met Irene, a lonely girl returning from the grave of a father whose deathbed she had gone out too late to witness. Both men fell in love with her. The rivalry becoming mutually obvious, each gave the other a fair field. The wooing continued in London till success fell upon Gerard. On his meeting with Irene after her marriage, the other, Hugh Colman, bowed low over her hand, kissed it and put a loyal friendship at her service. A proud bearing, emphasised by steel-blue eyes and a supercilious up-sweep of a heavy auburn moustache, gave distinction to the action. He had rather a courtly way of doing things. The tears started to her eyes. She had been greatly drawn to him before, and pitied him out of her girlish heart for having lost in his rivalry; but from that moment she loved him with a pure friendship, and made it a dear object of her life to intensify the brotherly affection between the two men. In fact she had raised her conception of this Orestes and Pylades relationship to a kind of cult, of which she herself was the devoted and impassioned priestess. During the six years of her married life Hugh had dined with them at least once a week. Lately he had taken a flat in their immediate neighbourhood, and his visits had grown more frequent. Gerard, being a man of few words, had not said much to evince his gratification, but Irene had sounded the note of welcome loud enough for the two.

As she lay back in her chair watching them, a spice of admiration flavoured her thoughts. Both were men of fine physique. Gerard was six feet two, of huge frame, with deep, sloping shoulders indicative of great strength. Hugh, of somewhat slighter build, better proportioned, holding his head erect on square shoulders; finer, too, of face than Gerard, who had heavy features, eyes of uncertain blue and a reddish moustache cut short at the ends. The one face gave the impression of a man proudly scornful, quick in quarrel, with a Celtic strain of sensitiveness; the other that of a man slow in method, determined of purpose, shy of demonstration—one suggesting rather than revealing strength—a dangerous face to trust. Of the two, Hugh was pre-eminently the man more likely, on first sight, to win a woman’s heart in a joint contest. Even Gerard himself had wondered at his success. When he questioned his wife, she answered, lifting glorious eyes of faith, “Because you are you.” And that was an end of the matter. But perhaps it was the suggestion of reserved strength in the man that had influenced her from the first in his favour, and an intuition, such as so many women have trusted like a divine revelation, that in a great crisis of life the one would be living rock and the other shifting sand.

A pause in the talk gradually lingered into silence. Gerard, at the head of the table, near Irene, manipulated his pipe, which had become choked and would not draw. Hugh, at the side, half turning towards the fire, leaned back in his chair, and, with hands clasped behind his head, stared at the ceiling. Irene suddenly spoke:

“How are the Harts?”

Hugh started into a more normal posture.

“The Harts? They flourish. Have you ever heard of a Jew money-lender who didn’t?”

There was an unwonted touch of acerbity in his tone that brought a quick glance from Irene.

“They are not both money-lenders,” she remarked.

“Oh, Minna—she is right enough.”

“I’m sorry for the poor girl,” said Irene. “I wish she would let me be a friend to her, but she won’t. I wonder why.”

“What do you want to worry about her for?” asked her husband, between the whiffs of his newly regulated pipe.

“I pity her so.”

“Some people don’t like being pitied. I don’t.”

“But you are not a pretty girl cut by society,” insisted Irene.

“She’s proud, you know,” said Hugh. He might have adduced a reason much nearer home. As it was, he gave a hint of it.

“The moon, Irene, pales as a matter of course before the sun; but it’s an open question whether the moon likes it.”

“You are talking rubbish,” said Irene, calmly.

Gerard broke into a laugh.

“Anyway, I’m glad she hasn’t cottoned to you. I don’t like Jews about the place. To your tents, O Israel!”

Irene flashed up. “You can’t object to the poor girl just because she is a Jewess!”

“Of course not, my dear,” replied her husband, with a curious change of tone. “I was only joking.”

Irene came behind his chair and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Forgive me, dear,” she said.

He nodded, and patted the back of her hand magnanimously; then pushed his chair away from the table and rose to his feet, stretching himself after the manner of burly men.

“I’m off to the smoking-room to make up some trout casts. You two can come when you’ve finished the discussion.”

When he had gone Irene took his vacated seat. “The girl seems so lonely. That’s why I take an interest in her.”

Hugh lit a cigarette and replied vaguely. Irene noticed a lack of enthusiasm, and attributed it to a lack of interest. There was a short silence.

“Is anything the matter?” she said at last.

“Why should there be?”

“You are not yourself to-night. You have been working too hard and want a change. Why not go down to Weston’s to-morrow with Gerard to fish?”

“Gerard hasn’t asked me.”

“As if that were necessary. I’ll tell him at once you are going.”

“Oh, no,” he laughed. “I’m not to be regulated in that fashion. I’m not overworked. I’m as strong as a horse. If you want to know what I was thinking about, I’ll tell you—more or less. I remembered it was just six years ago to-day when I first saw you after your marriage.”

She looked meditatively towards the fire, a smile upon her lips.

“And I had just been thinking how happy these six years had been and how peaceful and sweet these evenings were, the three of us together. Perhaps I have been selfish.”

He caught the implication, and broke into protest.

“You know very well they are the happiest times of my life,” he said. “Where else could I get what I have here?”

“I sometimes think it would be better for you if you could find a nice woman to give you something better,” she said, somewhat timorously.

“Oh, don’t talk like that, Renie,” he cried, impetuously, throwing his cigarette into the fire. “The more I see of other women, the more I despair. I see a lot of them. I’ve been married to a half a dozen already, by popular rumour. I suppose I shall end one of these days by marrying one in grim earnest. I’m a fool, Renie, I know. But que veux-tu? My temperament is not that of an anchorite. I know how it will be. A whirl of the senses—and after that the deluge. And then I’ll come back here and sit in this room and wonder how the devil I could have thought of another woman. You’ve spoiled me for the common run of women. I haven’t met one yet that is fit to black your shoes. The man that worships the sun doesn’t give his allegiance to a bonfire.”

“But he can warm himself by the bonfire,” replied Irene, laughing.

“Until the thing goes out. Then he’s got to light another. But the sun is eternal.”

She was accustomed to his hyperbole. The woman in her loved the praise. It supplemented Gerard’s rarer tributes to her worth, effectually prevented her from feeling a lack in her husband’s lesser demonstrativeness. Again, she was enlightened enough to allow relief to overburdened feelings. A man of his type could not love her to-day and cast her out of his heart to-morrow. She never had a moment’s doubt that she was throned there as the love of his life. But a magnanimous scorn of thoughts of disloyalty on his part triumphed supremely over a false position.

In Hugh’s present outburst, however, she detected some special determining cause.

“I’m a very limited being, my dear Hugh,” she said quickly, “whatever exaggerations I let you use. But you know how deep my interest in your welfare is, and life could not go wrong with you without causing me—and Gerard—pain and anxiety. That was why I spoke. Whatever it is, I am sorry.”

Sympathy could not have been more delicately conveyed than it was by her tone and look. But there are times when sympathy stings. He remained silent for a moment, then shifted his position, threw back his head and twirled his great moustache.

“You are everything that is sweet, Renie,” said he. “But I was telling you general truths—not posing as un homme manquÉ. I hate the kind of fellows that are forever mewing about for women’s sympathy. It’s despicable!”

He rose, and, with two arms held out, took her hands and raised her from her chair.

“There. Don’t be hurt. Everything’s going on swimmingly, I assure you. The world at my feet, and heaven at my finger tips. Let us go to Gerard.” The smoking-room was a nondescript apartment, half library, half gun-room, suggestive more of the country squire than the London barrister. Gerard, with a glass of water on a little table by his side, was engaged upon his casts, screwing up his eyes, so as both to avoid the smoke of his pipe and to see the delicate involutions of his knots. He looked up, with a nod, when his wife and friend entered. Irene turned to a desk to scribble a note. The men’s talk turned upon fishing. Weston had killed a two-pound trout the day before. They discussed the chances of a similar prize for Gerard. Then came the question of flies. Gerard waxed learned. Irene, having written her note and finding herself out of the conversation, took up a book. Gerard’s love of sport she indulgently allowed, but in her heart she could not sympathise with it. The wilful infliction of pain passed her comprehension. There was so much of it in the world already.

She was glad when she became aware of a change of topic, and drew her chair nearer the fire. But Hugh, looking at his watch, rose to depart. Irene protested.

“So early? It is not ten o’clock yet.”

There was a touch of dismay in her tone. Gerard, too, bade him sit down again. But he pleaded work. He had been briefed in a hurry, had not a notion yet of the case which was coming on immediately.

They had to let him go, and when he had gone, fell to discussing him as they had done a thousand times before. Irene idealised and worshipped her husband, but her feelings towards Hugh were composed of conflicting and of somewhat delicate elements. The man’s history, mode of life and diversity of character, appealed by turns to her sense of romance, of trust, of protection. He had squandered a pretty patrimony in his early days. A diamond brooch still glittered before the footlights on an oblivious bosom. He had lived open-handedly, benefiting more by his vices than many of the austere do by their virtues. Even now, with modest income at the criminal bar, small thrift was incomprehensible to him, in spite of Irene’s periodical expositions. On such occasions she looked serenely down upon him from immeasurable heights. But in this man of so many simplicities, seemed to lie a baffling fund of reserve, which both compelled her respect and kept her intellectual interest in him upon the alert. The paradox fascinated her especially in its extension to achievement. For with a habit of glowing speech he combined a severe literary taste. A reputation of some standing had been made and was upheld by poems wrought with crystalline coldness. On the other hand, a recent and sudden opening at the bar was chiefly due to tempestuous advocacy.

“You seem to be worrying your head over everybody to-night,” said Gerard at last. “First it was Israel Hart’s daughter and now it’s Hugh. Whence this violent attack of altruism?”

“I have everything that life can give me, and I should like others to have the same. Now, there’s something wrong with Hugh.”

“There always is. A man can’t have the temperament of an Ajax and expect to go through life smoothly.”

“His friends can help him,” said Irene.

“My dear, good Renie,” said Gerard, slipping the last cast into his fly-book, which he strapped deliberately, “if there is one cry bitterer than another that goes up to heaven it is ‘Save us from our friends!’”