said, "you
certainly don't know everything, my son. You never have come a cropper
in your life."

"Haven't I, though?" Hugh sat up, eager to refute this criticism.
"That's all you know about it. I suppose you think you have had the
monopoly of hard knocks. Most people do."

"I am not like most people," Conyers asserted deliberately. "But you
needn't tell me that you have ever been right under, my boy. For you
never have."

"Depends what you call going under," protested Palliser. "I've been down
a good many times, Heaven knows. And I've had to wait--as you have--all
the best years of my life."

"Your best years are to come," rejoined Conyers. "Mine are over."

"Oh, rot, man! Rot--rot--rot! Why, you are just coming into your own!
Have another drink and give me the toast of your heart!" Hugh Palliser
sprang impulsively to his feet. "Let me mix it! You can't--you shan't be
melancholy to-night of all nights."

But Conyers stayed his hand.

"Only one more drink to-night, boy!" he said. "And that not yet. Sit
down and smoke. I'm not melancholy, but I can't rejoice prematurely.
It's not my way."

"Prematurely!" echoed Hugh, pointing to the official envelope.

"Yes, prematurely," Conyers repeated. "I may be as rich as Croesus, and
yet not win my heart's desire."

"Oh, I know that," said Hugh quickly. "I've been through it myself. It's
infernal to have everything else under the sun and yet to lack the one
thing--the one essential--the one woman."

He sat down again, abruptly thoughtful. Conyers smoked silently, with
his face in the shadow.

Suddenly Hugh looked across at him.

"You think I'm too much of an infant to understand," he said. "I'm
nearly thirty, but that's a detail."

"I'm forty-five," said Conyers.

"Well, well!" Hugh frowned impatiently. "It's a detail, as I said
before. Who cares for a year more or less?"

"Which means," observed Conyers, with his dry smile, "that the one woman
is older than you are."

"She is," Palliser admitted recklessly. "She is five years older. But
what of it? Who cares? We were made for each other. What earthly
difference does it make?"

"It's no one's business but your own," remarked Conyers through a haze
of smoke.

"Of course it isn't. It never has been." Hugh yet sounded in some
fashion indignant. "There never was any other possibility for me after I
met her. I waited for her six mortal years. I'd have waited all my life.
But she gave in at last. I think she r