“Uncle Cathcart,” she said in a low voice, “I did so hope and pray that we should part friends! Every night when I kneel by my bed and say ‘Please, God, give Uncle Cathcart a sense of humour and make him a nice man,’ I have expected the miracle to happen.” Uncle Cathcart wriggled. “Have your own way,” he said loudly. “I can’t put an old head on young shoulders. Those who live longest will see most.” “The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” she added gently. “You forgot that one.” At luncheon, Mr. Collings tapped the ash of his cigar into the coffee saucer. “What is this fellow like--this Selsbury?” “He’s wonderful!” she said dreamily. “He rowed six in the University eight--I’m simply crazy about him.” The startled Mr. Collings gazed at her in fascinated horror. “Is he crazy about you?” he gasped. Diana smiled. She was adjusting her nose with the aid of a mirror concealed in the flap of her handbag. “He will be,” she said softly. CHAPTER II Neither by nature crazy, nor by inclination eccentric, Mr. Gordon Selsbury had at moments serious but comfortable doubts as to whether he was not a little abnormal; whether he was not, in fine, one of those rare and gifted mortals to whom was given Vision beyond the ordinary. His environment was the commonplace City of London; his occupation a shrieking incongruity for a spiritual man--he was an insurance broker. And a prosperous insurance broker. Sometimes he sat before the silver fire grate of his sitting-room, amazed at the contradictory evidence of his own genius. Here (said he, thinking impartially) was a man with a Conscious Soul, beside whom other men were clods, vegetables, animals of the field, slaves to their material demands. Lifted above the world and its peculiarly grimy interests, he was a man whose spiritual head rose above fog and was one with the snow-capped mountains and the blue skies. And yet--here was the truly astonishing thing--he could grapple most practically with these materialists and could tear from the clenched and frenzied paws large quantities of soiled and greasy money.... “No, Trenter, I shall be out to-morrow afternoon. Will you please tell Mr. Robert that I will see him at my office. Thank you, Trenter.” Trenter inclined his head respectfully and went back to the telephone. “No, sir, Mr. Selsbury will not be at home to-morrow.” Bobbie Selsbury was annoyed. “Will you tell him that he promised to play in a foursome with me, tell him--ask him to come to the telephone.” Gordon got up from his tapestried armchair with an expressionless face. Before the servants he revealed nothing in the least degree emotive. “Yes, yes, I know!” wearily. “But I had a prior engagement. You must get somebody else. Old Mendlesohn ... what’s the matter with him? Rubbish, my dear fellow.... At any rate, you must get somebody--I’m tremendously busy to-morrow.... I don’t feel like discussing my business on the telephone. Good-bye.”