"Perhaps," Huntington assented dubiously; "but because you show symptoms of lapsing is no sign that I shall fall from the blessed state of bachelorhood. I supposed that our inoculation made us both immune, but if the virus has weakened in your system I have no doubt that any woman you select will have a heart big enough for us both." "If she hasn't, we won't take her into the firm," laughed Cosden. * * * * * II * * * * * Huntington was unusually preoccupied during the period of dinner. Even when alone he was in the habit of making the evening meal a function, in which his man Dixon and his cook took especial pride. But to-night the words of praise or gentle criticism were lacking, one course succeeding another mechanically without comment of any kind. When Dixon followed him up-stairs to the library with coffee and liqueur he found him with his _Transcript_ still unfolded lying in his lap; and, whatever may have happened in the mean time, the same attitude of abstraction prevailed when Dixon returned, three hours later, received his final instructions, and was dismissed for the night. Cosden had undoubtedly dropped off into that slumber which belongs by right to the man whose day has presented him with a brilliant inspiration; but Huntington still sat alone, absorbed in his own thoughts. The chronicler has already intimated that Huntington was possessed of a sentimental nature, but were he to stop there he would understate the real truth. Huntington was exceedingly sentimental--far more so than he himself realized, which made it natural that his friends should be deceived. He was a bachelor not from choice, as he would have the world think, but from circumstance, and the absence of home and wife and children represented the one lack in an otherwise entirely satisfactory career. It was the only thing his father had not provided for him, and he himself had not possessed sufficient energy to take the initiative. The conversation on the way home from the Club brought matters fairly before Huntington's mental vision. One moment it seemed monstrous that his friend of so many years' standing should deliberately announce his intention of entering into an estate from which he himself must perforce be barred, yet while the treachery seemed blackest Huntington found himself acknowledging that it was the proper step for Cosden to take, and admiring that characteristic which saved him from committing his own mistake. Yet, if years before he had only--but herein lies the most extraordinary evidence of Huntington's sentimentality. If the story were told--and it can scarcely be called a story--it would begin and end like Sidney Carton's in one long "what might have been."