"I can't
deny that. And I find you as I believed I should." Then he added,
seriously--"I knew Angela would keep us good friends."

For a moment Gordon said nothing. Then, at last--

"Yes, for that purpose it did n't matter which of us should marry her.
If it had been I," he added, "she would have made you accept it."

"Ah, I don't know!" Bernard exclaimed.

"I am sure of it," said Gordon earnestly--almost argumentatively. "She
's an extraordinary woman."

"Keeping you good friends with me--that 's a great thing. But it 's
nothing to her keeping you good friends with your wife."

Gordon looked at Bernard for an instant; then he fixed his eyes for some
time on the fire.

"Yes, that is the greatest of all things. A man should value his
wife. He should believe in her. He has taken her, and he should keep
her--especially when there is a great deal of good in her. I was a great
fool the other day," he went on. "I don't remember what I said. It was
very weak."

"It seemed to me feeble," said Bernard. "But it is quite within a man's
rights to be a fool once in a while, and you had never abused of the
license."

"Well, I have done it for a lifetime--for a lifetime." And Gordon took
up his hat. He looked into the crown of it for a moment, and then he
fixed his eyes on Bernard's again. "But there is one thing I hope you
won't mind my saying. I have come back to my old impression of Miss
Vivian."

"Your old impression?"

And Miss Vivian's accepted lover frowned a little.

"I mean that she 's not simple. She 's very strange."

Bernard's frown cleared away in a sudden, almost eager smile.

"Say at once that you dislike her! That will do capitally."

Gordon shook his head, and he, too, almost smiled a little.

"It 's not true. She 's very wonderful. And if I did dislike her, I
should struggle with it. It would never do for me to dislike your wife!"

After he had gone, when the night was half over, Bernard, lying awake
a while, gave a laugh in the still darkness, as this last sentence came
back to him.

On the morrow he saw Blanche, for he went to see Gordon. The latter, at
first, was not at home; but he had a quarter of an hour's talk with his
wife, whose powers of conversation were apparently not in the smallest
degree affected by anything that had occurred.

"I hope you enjoyed your visit to London," she said. "Did you go to buy
Angela a set of diamonds in Bond Street? You did n't buy anything--you
did n't