Hubert Brett could never quite escape from business; he analysed himself too much. His action sprung from impulse, education, ancestry, whatever source philosophers may choose to say, but it was followed by a sequel due to his own introspection. He tended in this way to set up something like a chain--a sequence of states which might almost be expected after any given act. He might have owned, found in a candid vein, that selfishness was his besetting fault. It had been so--this would be his excuse, if he indeed admitted what certainly he knew--it had been so from birth; at any rate since he recalled himself an only son and younger than his only sister, pampered and indulged so far as even a small child could wish. He always _had_ got what he wanted. Hence naturally sprang a sort of self-centredom, a tendency to think first of what _he_ desired, something which, well, hang it all, no, it wasn't selfishness, but merely that self-confidence which all men who meant to get things done must first of all possess.... None the less, every now and then (he noticed it more, since Helena had been with him), he did, he knew, do things no doubt quite justifiable if one were thinking only of success, efficiency, and so forth; but rather beastly from the other person's--from Helena's--standpoint. It was so easy, when defending your own interests (and otherwise you'd get no work done ever), to be thoughtless, irritable, mean. About those lectures or whatever they were of the poor little girl's, for instance.... Ought he, came the doubt when he was back in his own den at one minute past five o'clock--ought he to have given in to her for once, if she was really so immensely keen to take him? After all there often were days when he had finished work easily by six o'clock; whole months, even, between books, when he did no work after tea; but there was such a thing as System, and though a married man, he was quite bachelor enough to love this time of solitude with pipe and books. Helena was sweet; no man could ever have been luckier about his wife; but he saw her for much more than one-half the day and all of it on Sundays. Yes really, he could not see that she had any right to look for more. Perhaps those City men took their wives to these precious causeries, but they were ever so much more away. Oh yes, he saw a lot of her and however much she might complain, he knew that she was really lucky.... All the same, as he never had and the dear child wanted it, perhaps----? Whereat Hubert, having worked comfortably around his usual circle--Selfishness, Remorse, Ample Self-Excuse, and Noble Expiation--got up, feeling very light of heart, and went back to the drawing-room.