e first time for many weeks he was
utterly and profoundly sorry for Jimmy Challoner, as he stood staring
at the hall porter with blank eyes. The eager flush had faded from his
face; he looked, all at once, ill and old; he pulled himself together
with an effort.

"Oh! All right--thanks--thanks very much."

His voice sounded dazed. He turned and went down the steps to the
street; but when he reached the pavement he stood still again, as if he
hardly knew what he was doing. When Sangster touched his arm he
started violently.

"What is it? Oh, yes--I'm coming." He began to walk on at such a rate
that Sangster could hardly keep pace with him. He expostulated
good-humouredly:

"What's the hurry, old chap? I'm getting old, remember."

Jimmy slackened speed then. He looked at his friend with burning eyes.

"I'll break every bone in that devil's carcass," he said furiously.
"I'll teach him to come dangling after my wife. I ought to have known
that was his little game. No wonder she won't go anywhere with me.
It's Kettering--damn his impertinence! I suppose he's been setting her
against me. He and Horace always thought I was a rotter and an
outsider. I'll spoil his beauty for him; I'll----" His voice had
risen excitedly. A man passing turned to stare curiously.

Sangster slipped a hand through Jimmy's arm.

"Don't be so hasty, old chap. There's no harm in your wife going out
to lunch with Kettering if she wants to. Give her the benefit of the
doubt for the present, at least."

"She's chucked me for him. She promised to meet me. She thinks more
of him than she does of me, or she'd never have gone." There was a
sort of enraged agony in Jimmy's voice, a fierce colour burned in his
pale face.

Sangster shrugged his shoulders. It was rather amusing to him that
Jimmy should be playing the jealous husband--Jimmy, whose own life had
been so singularly selfish and full of little episodes which no doubt
he would prefer to be buried and forgotten.

Jimmy turned on him:

"You're pleased, of course. You're chuckling up your sleeve. You
think it serves me right--and I dare say it does; but I can't bear it,
I tell you--I won't--I won't."

The words were boyish enough, but there was something of real tragedy
in his young voice, something that forced the realisation home to
Sangster that perhaps it was not merely dog-in-the-manger jealousy that
was goading him now, but genuine pain. He looked at him quick