you! Come in!"

Rokeby followed him into his rooms, on the second floor. A good fire
was burning, but they were just bachelor rooms full of hired--and
cheap--furniture. As Osborn cast off his overcoat and took Rokeby's, he
glanced around expressively.

"You should see the flat. You _will_ see it soon. All Marie's
arrangement, and absolutely charming."

"Thanks awfully. I'll be your first caller."

"Well, don't forget it. What'll you have?"

"Whiskey, please."

"So'll I."

Osborn gave Desmond one of the two armchairs by the fire, and took the
other himself. Another silence fell, during which Rokeby saw Osborn
smiling secretly and involuntarily to himself as he had seen other men
smile. The man was uplifted; his mind soared in heaven, while his body
dwelt in a hired plush chair in the sitting-room of furnished lodgings.
Rokeby took his drink, contented not to interrupt; he watched Osborn,
and saw the light play over his face, and the thoughts full of beauty
come and go. At length, following the direction of some thought, again
it was Osborn who broke the mutual quiet, exclaiming:

"I've never shown you her latest portrait!"

"Let's look. I'd love to."

The lover rose, opened the drawer of a writing-table, and took out a
photograph, a very modern affair, of most artistic mounting. He handed
it jealously to Desmond and was silent while the other man looked. The
girl's face, wondrously young and untroubled, frail, angelic, rose from
a slender neck and shoulders swathed in a light gauze cloud. Her gay
eyes gazed straight out. Rokeby looked longer than he knew, very
thoughtfully, and Osborn put his hand upon the portrait, pulled it away
as jealously as he had given it, and said:

"They've almost done her justice for once."

"Top-hole, old man," Rokeby replied sympathetically.

CHAPTER II

IRREVOCABLE

When Osborn dressed for his wedding he felt in what he called
first-class form. He thought great things of life; life had been
amazingly decent to him throughout. It had never struck him any
untoward blow. The death of his parents had been sadness, certainly,
but it was a natural calamity, the kind every sane man expected sooner
or later and braced himself for. His mother had left him a very little
money, and his father had left him a very little money; small as the
sum total was, it gave a man the comfortable impression of having
private means. He paid the first instalments on the dream-flat's
furnit