s at a patient, but as he might have at a
curious specimen inside a labelled bottle.

Hubert was quite pleased to have this opportunity for self-analysis
thrust on him. He liked to be thought peculiar but wished to be
sincere. He reflected a little, then slowly blew out a funnel of smoke
with energy behind it.

"Yes," he said, "and thank God I'm alone."

CHAPTER II

"WHY MEN MARRY"

Hubert shut the door after his visitor with no deep feeling of regret.
He managed to refrain from slamming it.

He was angry still.

Men are peculiar about their troubles. Woman, popularly thought to be
a sieve with secrets, will crush a worry down, grapple silently and
fight with it, nor ever let her very nearest know that it is there.
Perhaps heroic centuries of motherhood have taught her to endure her
own pain with a smile, where she can scarce bear to conceal another's
folly? The man, in any case, is different. Tell him what Mrs. Tomkins
stupidly said about the vicar: he will not breathe it to a living soul.
Quite possibly he will not even listen to the end.... But let him have
some small upset, some crisis where decision must be made, not a big
choice--nothing like those he makes off-hand each day up in his city
office--and you shall see him stripped of his pretence to all reserve
or strength. Long time, like Homeric heroes, he sits tossing thought
hither and thither. Nothing emerges from this exercise: it is a mere
convention. He must think a little: people always do; but he knows
well enough that not this way lies decision. He takes other steps. If
he is a man of few friends, he will risk everything upon a coin's fall.
"Heads I do, and tails I don't," he mutters weakly, groping in his
pocket. Up spins the penny. Heads it is! "Heads I do," he murmurs
once again; and adds, pathetically firm, "But all the same, I don't
think I will." He has been helped to his decision.

If he has friends, he will use one of them in place of the penny.
Every man, almost, has one trusted friend whose advice he does not take
in all moments of perplexity.

Kenneth Boyd stood, so to speak, as Hubert's penny. He always sat and
listened stolidly to his friend's trouble: then he answered "Heads" or
"Tails," as it seemed best to him; went back, braced by the contrast,
to his Hampstead home; and left Hubert to decide whether or no he would
take the spin as final.

In this case, as he sat down, Hubert said to himself with vehemenc