are_!"

With a fury of which he was unconscious he shook the other man
violently; and Barry broke away with an expression of annoyance.

"Good God, Owen, what do you think you're doing? What do you mean by
attacking me like this!"

"I'm going to knock your damned head off for telling me a lie!" His tone
was dangerous. "How dare you say that Vivian is married when you _know_
she is engaged to me?"

"Look here, Owen." Barry stood facing him, panting a little. "It's only
because you're my pal that I don't retaliate in kind. Any other man who
calls me a liar has to go through it, and that's a fact. But as it's
you, and as I know I've done the business badly--well"--his voice grew
suddenly wistful--"let's sit down and talk it over quietly, shall we?"

Something in his tone made the other man turn cold; and when he replied
his manner had lost its vehemence.

"See here, Barry, I'm sorry I attacked you like that. The fact is,
I ... I think I can't have understood rightly what you were trying to
tell me. You said something just now about Miss Rees being married to
Lord Saxonby. Well, what, exactly, did you mean?"

The very quietness with which he spoke made it still more difficult for
Barry to answer him.

"I meant just what I said." He fidgeted nervously with a cigarette as he
spoke. "Miss Rees was married--quietly--to Lord Saxonby this morning."

"Lord Saxonby? You mean that chap who hung round her before I went
away?" Owen's voice was studiously self-controlled, but his hand shook
as he played with a silver pencil-case on the table before him.

"Yes. That's the man."

"I see." For a moment he bent his head over the table, and when he
looked up Barry understood that he had accepted the truth at last. "So
she's played me false, has she? Married another fellow without troubling
to let me know. Well, there's no more to be said, I suppose. I must make
up my mind to be the laughing-stock of my friends, to be pointed at by
men and women, jeered at in the clubs, as the fellow who was
jilted ... thrown over for another fellow!"

He paused; then resumed in a louder tone.

"It's an ugly word, Barry--jilted. And by Jove, it's an ugly thing. Odd
how naturally women take to it, isn't it? They won't steal, as a
rule--draw the line at murder, but they think nothing of making damned
fools of men who are insane enough to believe in them!"

He laughed bitterly; and his eyes looked grim.

"It would have been quite easy to let m