PROUD in the make-believe that he was a fashionable groom, the loafer holding Morland's horse touched his ragged hat smartly at his temporary master's approach.

“Give him something, Jimmie; I have n't any change,” cried Morland. He mounted and rode away, debonair, with a wave of farewell. Jimmie drew from his pocket the first coin to hand, a florin, and gave it to the loafer, who came down forthwith from his dreams of high estate to commonplace earth, and after the manner of his class adjured the Deity to love the munificent gentleman. The two shillings would bring gladness into the hearts of his sick wife and starving children. Subject to the attestation of the Deity, he put forward as a truth the statement that they had not eaten food for a week. He himself was a hard-working man, but the profession of holding horses in the quiet roads of St. John's Wood was not lucrative.

“You're telling me lies, I'm afraid,” said Jimmie, “but you look miserable enough to say anything. Here!” He gave him two more shillings. The loafer thanked him and made a bee-line for the nearest public-house, while Jimmie, forgetting for the moment the pitiable aspect that poor humanity sometimes wears in the persons of the lowly, watched Morland's well-set-up figure disappear at the turn of the road. There was no sign of black care sitting behind that rider. It perched instead on Jimmie's shoulders, and there stayed for the rest of the day. In spite of his staunch trust in Morland's honour and uprightness, he found it hard to condone the fault. The parallel which Morland had not too ingenuously drawn with the far-away passionate episode in his own life had not seemed just. He had winced, wondered at the failure in tact, rebelled against the desecration of a memory so exquisitely sad. The moment after he had forgiven the blundering friend and opened his heart again to pity. He was no strict moralist, turning his head sanctimoniously aside at the sight of unwedded lovers. His heart was too big and generous. But between the romance of illicit love and the commonplace of vulgar seduction stretched an immeasurable distance. The words of the pathetic note, however, lingering in his mind, brought with them a redeeming fragrance. They conjured up the picture of sweet womanhood. They hinted no reproach; merely a trust which was expected to be fulfilled. To her Morland was the honourable gentleman all knew; he had promised nothing that he had not performed, that he would not perform. All day long, as he sat before his easel, mechanically copying folds of drapery from the lay figure on the platform, Jimmie strove to exonerate his friend from the baser fault, and to raise the poor love affair to a plane touched by diviner rays. But the black care still sat upon his shoulders.

The next morning he rose earlier than usual, and sought Morland at his house in Sussex Gardens. He found him eating an untroubled breakfast. Silver dishes, tray, and service were before him. A great flower-stand filled with MarÉchal Niel roses stood in the centre of the table. Fine pictures hung round the walls. Rare china, old oak chairs, and sideboard bright with silver bowls—all the harmonious and soothing luxury of a rich man's dining-room, gave the impression of ease, of a life apart from petty cares, petty vices, petty ambitions. A thick carpet sheltered the ears from the creaking footsteps of indiscretion. Awnings before the open windows screened the too impertinent light of the morning sun. And the face and bearing of the owner of the room were in harmony with its atmosphere. Jimmie reproached himself for the doubts that had caused his visit. Morland laughed at them. Had he not twice or thrice declared himself not a beast? Surely Jimmie must trust his oldest friend to have conducted himself honourably. There was never question of marriage. There had been no seduction. Could n't he understand? They had parted amicably some three months ago, each a little disillusioned. Morland was generous enough to strip a man's vanity from himself and stand confessed as one of whom a superior woman had grown tired. The new development of the affair revealed yesterday had, he repeated, come upon him like an unexpected lash. The irony of it, too, in the first flush of his engagement! Naturally he was remorseful; naturally he would do all that a man of honour could under the circumstances.

“More is not expected and not wanted. On my word of honour,” said Morland.

He had been upset, he continued smilingly. The consequences might be serious—to himself, not so much to Jenny. There were complications in the matter that might be tightened—not by Jenny—into a devil of a tangle. Had he not pleaded special urgency when he had first asked Jimmie to take in the letters under a false name? It might be a devil of a tangle, he repeated.

“But till that happens—and please God it may never happen—we may dismiss the whole thing from our minds,” said Morland, reassuringly. “Jenny will want for nothing, and want nothing. Do you think if there were any melodramatic villainy on my conscience I would go and engage myself to marry Norma Hardacre?”

This was the final argument that sent the black care, desperately clinging with the points of its claws, into infinite space. Jimmie smiled again. Morland waved away the uncongenial topic and called for a small bottle of champagne on ice. A glass apiece, he said, to toast the engagement. Rightly, champagne was the wine of the morning.

“It is the morning sunshine itself distilled,” said Jimmie, lifting up his glass.

He went home on the top of an omnibus greatly cheered, convinced that, whatever had happened, Morland had done no grievous wrong. When Aline went to the studio to summon him to lunch, she found him busy upon the sketch portrait of Norma, and humming a tune—a habit of his when work was proceeding happily under his fingers. She looked over his shoulder critically.

“That's very good,” she condescended to remark. “Now that Miss Hardacre is engaged to Mr. King, why don't you ask her to come and sit?”

“Do you think it's a good likeness?” he asked, leaning back and regarding the picture.

“It is the best likeness you have ever got in a portrait,” replied Aline, truthfully.

“Then, wisest of infants, what reason could I have for asking Miss Hardacre to sit? Besides, I don't want her to know anything about it.”

Aline glowed with inspiration. Why should things the most distantly connected with somebody else's marriage so exhilarate the female heart?

“Is it going to be a wedding present, Jimmie?”

“It is a study in indiscretion, my child,” he replied enigmatically.

“You are perfectly horrid.”

“I suppose I am,” he admitted, looking at the portrait with some wistfulness. “Ugly as sin, and with as much manners as a kangaroo =—does your feminine wisdom think a woman could ever fall in love with me?”

She touched caressingly the top of his head where the hair was thinning, and her feminine wisdom made this astounding answer:

“Why, you are too old, Jimmie dear.”

Too old! He turned and regarded her for a moment in rueful wonder. Absurd though it was, the statement gave him a shock. He was barely forty, and here was this full-grown, demure, smiling young woman telling him he was too old for any of her sex to trouble their heads about him. His forlorn aspect brought a rush of colour to the girl's cheeks. She put her arms round his neck.

“Oh, Jimmie, I have hurt you. I'm sorry. I'm a silly little goose. It's a wonder that every woman on earth is n't in love with you.”

“That is the tone of exaggerated affection, but not of conviction,” he said. “I am the masculine of what in a woman is termed passÉe. I might gain the esteem of a person of the opposite sex elderly like myself, but my gallant exterior can no longer inspire a romantic passion. My day is over. No, you have not hurt me. The sword of truth pierces, but it does not hurt.”

Then he broke into his good, sunny laughter, and rose and put his arm with rough tenderness round her shoulder, as he had done ever since she could walk.

“You are the youngest thing I have come across for a long time.”

Aline, as she nestled up against him on their way out of the studio, was thus impressed with a salutary consciousness of her extreme youth. But this in itself magnified Jimmie's age. She loved him with a pure passionate tenderness; no one, she thought, could know him without loving him; but her ideal of the hero of romance for whom fair ladies pined away in despairing secret was far different. She was too young as yet, too little versed in the signs by which the human heart can be read, to suspect what his playful question implied of sadness, hopelessness, renunciation.

On Sunday they lunched with Connie Deering. Morland and Norma and old Colonel Pawley, an ancient acquaintance of every one, were the only other guests. It was almost a family party, cried Connie, gaily; and it had been an inspiration, seeing that the invitations had been sent out before the engagement had taken place. Jimmie and Aline, being the first arrivals, had their hostess to themselves for a few moments.

“They both think it bad form to show a sign of it, but they are awfully gone upon each other,” Connie said. “So you must n't judge Norma by what she says. All girls like to appear cynical nowadays. It's the fashion. But they fall in love in the same silly way, just as they used to.”

“I am glad to hear they are fond of one another,” said Jimmie. “The deeper their love the happier I shall be.”

The little lady looked at him for a second out of the corner of her eye.

“What an odd thing to say!”

“It ought to be a commonplace thing to feel.”

“In the happiness of others there is always something that is pleasing. By giving him the lie like that you will make poor Rochefoucauld turn in his grave.”

“He ought to be kept revolving like Ixion,” said Jimmie. “His maxims are the Beatitudes of Hell.”

He laughed off the too trenchant edge of his epigram, qualifying it in his kind way. After all, you must n't take your cynic too literally. No doubt a kindly heart beats in the ducal bosom.

“I should like to know your real opinion of the devil,” laughed Mrs. Deering.

The opportunity for so doing was lost for the moment. The lovers entered, having driven together from the Park. At the sight of Norma, Aline twitched Jimmie's arm with a little gasp of admiration and Jimmie's breath came faster. He had not seen her hitherto quite so coldly, radiantly beautiful. Perhaps it was the great white hat she wore, a mystery of millinery, chiffon and roses and feathers melting one with the other into an effect of broad simplicity, that formed an unsanctified but alluring halo to a queenly head. Perhaps it was the elaborately simple cream dress, open-worked at neck and arms, that moulded her ripe figure into especial stateliness. Perhaps, thought poor Jimmie, it was the proud loveliness into which love was wont to transfigure princesses.

She received Connie's kiss and outpouring of welcome with her usual mocking smile. “If you offer me congratulations, I shall go away, Connie. I have been smirking for the last hour and a half. We were so exhausted by playing the sentimental idiots that we did n't exchange a word on our way here; though I believe Morland likes it. We saw those dreadful Fry-Robertsons bearing down upon us. He actually dragged me up to meet them, as who should say 'Let us go up and get congratulated.'”

“I don't see why I should hide my luck under a bushel,” laughed Morland.

“Thank you for the compliment,” said Norma. “But if you won at Monte Carlo you would n't pin the banknotes all over your coat and strut about the street. By the way, Connie, we're late. Need we apologise?”

“You're not the last. Colonel Pawley is coming.”

“Oh dear! that old man radiates boredom. How can you stand him, Connie?”

“He's the sweetest thing on earth,” said her hostess.

Norma laughed a little contemptuously and came forward to greet Aline and Jimmie. As she did so, her face softened. Jimmie, drawing her aside, offered his best wishes.

“The happiness of a man whom I have loved like a brother all my life can't be indifferent to me. On that account you must forgive my speaking warmly. May you be very happy.”

“I shall be happy in having such a champion of my husband for a brother-in-law,” said Norma, lightly.

“A loyal friend of your own, if you will,” said Jimmie.

There was a short pause. Norma ran the tip of her gloved finger down the leaf of a plant on a stand. They were by the window. A vibration in his voice vaguely troubled her.

“What do you really mean by 'loyal'?” she said at last, without looking at him.

“The word has but one meaning. If I tried to explain further, I should only appear to be floundering in fatuity.”

“I believe you are the kind that would stick to a woman through thick and thin, through good repute and ill repute. That's what you mean. Only you don't like to hint that I might at any time become disreputable. I may. All things are possible in this world.”

“Not that,” said Jimmie. “Perhaps I was unconsciously pleading for myself. Say you are a queen in your palace. While humbly soliciting a position in your household, I somewhat grandiloquently submit my qualifications.”

“What's all this about?” asked Morland, coming up, having overheard the last sentence.

“I am pleading for a modest position in Her Majesty's Household,” said Jimmie.

“We'll fit him up with cap and bells,” laughed Morland, “and make him chief jester, and give him a bladder to whack us over the head with. He's fond of doing that when we misbehave ourselves. Then he can get us out of our scrapes, like the fellow in Dumas—what's his name—Chicot, was n't it?”

Pleased with his jest, he turned to acquaint Connie with Jimmie's new dignity. Both the jest and the laugh that greeted it jarred upon Norma. Jimmie said to her good-humouredly:

“I might be Chicot, the loyal friend, without the cap and bells. I am a dull dog.”

She looked out of the window and laughed somewhat bitterly.

“I think you are a great deal too good to have anything to do with any of us.”

“It pleases you to talk arrant nonsense,” said he.

Luncheon was announced. At table Jimmie and Norma were neighbours. Aline sat between Morland, who was next to Norma, and old Colonel Pawley. As the latter at first talked to Mrs. Deering, Aline and Morland carried on a frigid conversation. They had never been friends. To Morland, naturally, she was merely a little girl of no account, who had often been annoyingly in the way when he wanted to converse with Jimmie; and Aline, with a little girl's keen intuition, had divined more of his real character than she was aware of, and disliked and distrusted him. Like a well-brought-up young lady she answered “yes” and “no” politely to his remarks, but started no fresh topic. At last, to her relief, Colonel Pawley rescued her from embarrassed silence. To him she had extended her favour. He was a short fat man, with soft hands and a curious soft purring voice, and the air rather of a comfortable old lady than of a warrior who had retired on well-merited laurels. He occupied his plentiful leisure by painting on silk, which he made into fans for innumerable lady acquaintances. In his coat-tail pocket invariably reposed a dainty volume bound in crushed morocco—a copy of little poems of his own composition—and this, when he was in company with a sympathetic feminine soul, he would abstract with apoplectic wheezing and bashfully present. He also played little tunes on the harp. Aline, with the irreverence of youth, treated him as a kind of human toy.

His first word roused the girl's spontaneous gaiety. She bubbled over with banter. The mild old warrior chuckled with her, threw himself unreservedly into the childish play. Connie whispered to Jimmie:

“I should like to tie a bit of blue ribbon round his neck and turn him loose in a meadow. I am sure he would frisk.”

Morland exchanged casual remarks with Norma. She answered absently. The change in Aline from the unsmiling primness wherewith Morland's society had cloaked her to sunny merriment with Colonel Pawley was too marked to escape her attention. In spite of the ludicrousness of the comparison, she could not help perceiving that the old man who radiated boredom had a quality of charm unpossessed by Morland, and she felt absurdly disappointed with her lover. During the last few days she had made up her mind to like him. Sober forecast of a lifetime spent in the inevitable intimacy of marriage had forced her to several conclusions. One, that it was essential to daily comfort that a woman should find the personality of a husband pleasing rather than antipathetic. With more ingenuousness than the world would have put to her credit, she had set herself deliberately to attain this essential ideal. The natural consequence was a sharply critical attitude and a quickly developing sensitiveness, whereby, as in a balance of great nicety, the minor evidences of his character were continually being estimated. Thus, Morland's jest before luncheon had jarred upon her. His careless air of patronage had betrayed a lack of appreciation of something—the word “spiritual” was not in her vocabulary, or she might have used it—of something, at all events, in his friend which differentiated him from the casual artist and which she herself had, not without discomfort, divined at their first meeting. The remark had appeared to her in bad taste. Still ruffled, she became all the more critical, and noted with displeasure his failure to have won a child's esteem. And yet she felt a touch of resentment against Jimmie for being the innocent cause of her discomposure. It gave rise to a little feline impulse to scratch him and see whether he were not mortal like every one else.

“Do you ever exhibit at the Royal Academy?” she asked suddenly.

“They won't have me,” said he.

“But you send in, don't you?”

“With heart-breaking regularity. They did have me once.” He sighed. “But that was many years ago, when the Academy was young and foolish.”

“I have heard they are exceedingly conservative,” said Norma, with the claws still unsheathed. “Perhaps you work on too original lines.”

But she could draw from him no expression of vanity. He smiled. “I suppose they don't think my pictures good enough,” he said simply.

“Jimmie's work is far too good for that wretched Academy,” said Connie Deering. “The pictures there always give you a headache. Jimmie's never do.”

“I should like to kill the Academy,” Aline broke in sharply, on the brink of tears. A little tragedy of murdered hopes lurked in her tone. Then, seeing that she had caused a startled silence, she reddened and looked at her plate. Jimmie laughed outright.

“Is n't she bloodthirsty? All the seventy of them weltering in their gore! Only the other day she said she would like to slaughter the whole Chinese Empire, because they ate puppies and birds'-nests!”

Connie chimed a frivolous remark in tune with Jimmie. Morland, as befitted a coming statesman, took up the parable of the march westwards of the yellow races. Colonel Pawley, who had been through the Taeping rebellion, was appealed to as an authority on the development of the Chinaman. He almost blushed, wriggled uncomfortably, and as soon as he could brought the conversation to the milder topic of Chinese teacups. Successful, he sighed with relief and told Aline the story of the willow pattern. The Royal Academy was forgotten. But Norma felt guilty and ashamed.

Nor was she set more at ease with herself by a careless remark of Morland's as Connie's front door closed behind them an hour or so later.

“I am afraid you rather rubbed it into poor old Jimmie about the Academy. The little girl looked as if she would like to fly at you. She is a spoiled little cat.”

“I have noticed she does n't seem to like you,” answered Norma, sourly.

The drive as far as Grosvenor Place, where Norma proposed to pay a solitary call, was not as pleasant as he had anticipated. He parted from her somewhat resentful of an irritable mood, and walked back towards Sussex Gardens through the Park, reviling the capriciousness of woman.