long! Now, it seems to me to be a brave man's part to bear misfortune calmly,[Pg 50] without whimpering, but one would think it required a courage of superhuman kind to be able to remain sociable, cheerful, merry, even. But, oh, how bitter he is when he shows one all his thoughts! He warned me to rely on nobody; he said there was not a man in the world, even less a woman, who would stick to you if you were in trouble. Trouble comes; they are vanished like melting snow; a heap of dirt is left behind. Then he suddenly burst into tears and told me to forget all he had said, for he had given me the outpourings of a disappointed, soured man. I was young; let me trust every one as long as I could, let me make friends right and left; only, if trouble came, and they fell away, then, if I could find consolation therein, I might remember that the same thing had happened to others also." [Pg 50] Geoffrey was staring absently into the fire; his cigarette had gone out, and his whisky was untasted. "By Gad!" he said. "Poor old beggar!" And Harry, knowing that the British youth does not express sympathy in verbose paragraphs, or show his emotion by ejaculatory cries, was satisfied that the story had touched his friend. Day by day and week by week Harry moved more at his ease in the world of people of whom hitherto he had known so little. The wall of the castle which he had erected round himself, compacted of his own diffidence and a certain hauteur of disposition, fell like the fortifications of Jericho at the blast of the trumpet, and it was a young[Pg 51] man, pleasant in body and mind, pleased with little, but much anxious to please, that came forth. His dinner invitation to some new house would be speedily indorsed by the greater intimacy of a Saturday till Monday, and the days were few on which he sat down to a cover for one in Cavendish Square. [Pg 51] Among these more particular friends with whom previous acquaintance soon ripened into intimacy, Lady Oxted, an old friend of Harry's father, stood pre-eminent. Here he soon became ami de la maison, dropping in as he chose, well knowing he was welcome; and such a footing, speedily and unquestioningly gained, was to one of a life previously so recluse a pleasure new and altogether delightful; for Lady Oxted had the power of creating the atmosphere of home, and home was one of those excellent things which Harry had hitherto lacked. He had not consciously missed it, because he
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