but there's an angel or a devil to
write it down. Morton had hardly made his discovery when Bewsher turned
up from India, transferred to a crack cavalry regiment; a sunburnt,
cordial Bewsher, devilishly determined to enjoy the fulness of his
prime. On his skirts, as he had done once before, Morton penetrated
farther and farther into the esoteric heart of society. I'm not sure
just how Bewsher felt toward Morton at the time; he liked him, I think;
at all events, he had the habit of him. As for Morton, he liked Bewsher
as much as he dared; he never permitted himself to like any one too
much.

"I don't know how it is with you, but I have noticed again and again
that intimate friends are prone to fall in love with the same woman:
perhaps it is because they have so many tastes in common; perhaps it is
jealousy--I don't know. Anyhow, that is what happened to these two,
Morton first, then Bewsher; and it is characteristic that the former
mentioned it to no one, while the latter was confidential and expansive.
Such men do not deserve women, and yet they are often the very men women
fall most in love with. At first the girl had been attracted to Morton,
it seems; he intrigued her--no doubt the sense of power about him; but
the handsomer man, when he entered the running, speedily drew ahead. You
can imagine the effect of this upon her earlier suitor. It was the first
rebuff that for a long time had occurred to him in his ordered plan of
life. He resented it and turned it over in his mind, and eventually, as
it always does to men of his kind, his opportunity came. You see, unlike
Bewsher and his class, all his days had been an exercise in the
recognition and appreciation of chances. He isolated the inevitable fly
in the ointment, and in this particular ointment the fly happened to be
Bewsher's lack of money and the education the girl had received. She was
poor in the way that only the daughter of a great house can be. To
Morton, once he was aware of the fly, and once he had combined the
knowledge of it with what these two people most lacked, it was a simple
thing. They lacked, as you have already guessed, courage and directness.
On Morton's side was all the dunder-headism of an aristocracy, all its
romanticism, all its gross materialism, all its confusion of ideals. But
you mustn't think that he, Morton, was cold or objective in all this:
far from it; he was desperately in love with the girl himself, and he
was playing his game l