One afternoon some business had taken him towards the city, and he returned hot, dusty, but irresistibly buoyant shortly before dinner. Madge was sitting in the studio, where, with its north aspect, coolness was never wholly absent, and though her heart went out to meet even his step on the stairs, she looked suspiciously at a small parcel under his arm as he entered. "Yes, champagne," he said. "One bottle, half for you and half for me. Oh, let me explain. I got a dividend this morning of eight shillings and sixpence from twenty-five shares in something which I had forgotten, and which had therefore ceased to exist. Oh, Madge, don't scream! What use is eight shillings? But we both want champagne, so its equivalent in champagne is of use. No, it's no use trying to make me feel sorry, because I'm not. I just had to. Oh, you darling!" He sat down on the sofa by her. "I'm hot, I know," he said, "but you might kiss just the end of my nose. I haven't seen you for five hours." She kissed him. "But you are simply abominable," she said. "Yes, that probably is so. Another thing happened to-day, too. I saw Philip. He was driving to Waterloo. In a hansom. Luggage was behind with his servant in a cab. He didn't see me; at least if he did, he appeared not to." Evelyn paused a moment. "Poor devil!" he said. "I don't know how you feel, but I am awfully sorry for him. But how could I help it? Are you a fatalist, Madge?" "If I am, what then?" "Nothing; but you've got to listen to a little sermon, whether you are or not. It's dreadful about Philip; you see, he was my friend. But what else was to be done? Wasn't the whole thing inevitable? How could it have been otherwise but that you and I should be here?" "Otherwise?" she said, "what otherwise was there? Yet--yet, oh, Evelyn, on what little accidents it all depended. The thunderstorm down in the New Forest, your atrocious----" "What?" "Your atrocious behaviour. And then that it was he who asked me to give you one more sitting, and that my mother should have opened my letter! Is life all accidents? Are you and I the prey of any future accidents? May we be marred and maimed by what is as fortuitous as all this?" Evelyn shifted slightly in his seat. This summing up of the past was a thing he was not inclined to. It was summed up and finished with, except in so far as the present was the finished past. Why go over the accounts again? There was no doubt as to their correctness.