We went into a deserted smoking-room where decanters and siphons were set out. Jaffery helped himself to a mighty whisky and soda and poured it down his throat. "You seemed to want that," said I, drily. "It's this infernal kit," said he, with a gesture including his frock coat and patent leather boots. "For gossamer comfort give me a suit of armour. At any rate that's a man's kit." I made some jesting answer; but it had been given to me to see that transient shadow of pain and despair, and I knew that the discomfort of the garments of civilisation had nothing to do with the swallowing of the huge jorum of alcohol. Of course I told Barbara all about it--it is best to establish your wife in the habit of thinking you tell her everything--and she was more than usually gentle to Jaffery. We carried him down with us to Northlands that afternoon, calling at his club for a suit-case. In the car he tucked a very tired and comfort-desiring Susan in the shelter of his great arm. There was something pathetically tender in the gathering of the child to him. Barbara with her delicate woman's sense felt the harmonics of chords swept within him. And when we reached home and were alone together, she said with tears very near her eyes: "Poor old Jaff. What a waste of a life!" "My dear," I replied, "so said Doria. But you speak with the tongue of an angel, whereas Doria, I'm afraid, is still earth-bound." The tear fell with a laugh. She touched my cheek with her hand. "When you're intelligent like that," she said, "I really love you." For a mere man to be certified by Barbara as intelligent is praise indeed. "I wonder," she said, a little later, "whether those two are going to be happy?" "As happy," said I, "as a mutual admiration society of two people can possibly be." She rebuked me for a tinge of cynicism in my estimate. They were both of them dears and the marriage was genuine Heaven-made goods. I avowed absolute agreement. "But what would have happened," she said reflectively, "if Jaffery had come along first and there had been no question of Adrian. Would they have been happy?" Then I found my opportunity. "Woman," said I, "aren't you satisfied? You have made one match--you, and you'll pardon me for saying so, not Heaven--and now you want to unmake it and make a brand-new hypothetical one." "All your talk," she said, "doesn't help poor Jaffery." I put my hand to my head to still the flickering in my brain, kissed her and retired to my dressing-room. Barbara smiled, conscious of triumph over me. During dinner and afterwards in the drawing-room, she played the part of Jaffery's fairy mother. She discussed his homelessness--she had an eerie way of treading on delicate ground. A bed in a tent or a club or an inn. That was his home. He had no possessions.