‘My wife, you fool! Now are you satisfied?’ Kirkdale dropped his hands suddenly. Travers walked over to the looking-glass, settled his cuffs, and wiped his forehead. Then he leaned his back against the mantelpiece and surveyed Kirkdale, who had thrown himself into an armchair on the other side of the room. After a pause he spoke. ‘I need not tell you, Kirkdale, that I have long foreseen this situation: I knew we should have to come to an understanding sooner or later.’ ‘And you played your cards accordingly?’ ‘There is no necessity to be so bitter about it. When a man has absolutely nothing but his wits to rely upon, he must cultivate them. Because I have acquired some skill in the marshalling of events, I don’t see that you need reproach me. We all have our temptations. Your father succumbed to the temptations of idleness, I to the temptations of necessity. I was brought up rather more luxuriously than yourself, for my father’s vices did not make him bad-tempered; your father’s did, and that always has a chastening effect upon a man’s offspring. As I was saying, no want of mine was denied until I was practically cast on my own resources, just at the age when one’s tastes are most expensive. I needn’t tell you what it means to be in a crack regiment with no private income. I had not learnt how to make money as a middleman, or by gambling on the stock exchange; the only resources open to me I took advantage of and kept afloat for some time, then luck deserted me and the crash came. I went abroad; I associated with men not fit to black my boots. My life was a perfect hell. My God! how do you suppose a man brought up as I have been can earn enough to keep him going in a way that makes life worth living? One must have at least five thousand a year. Where is it to come from?’ ‘Oh, go to the devil!’ ‘Precisely, that is the only answer to my question. I have been.’ Kirkdale rose and walked up and down the room impatiently. He snapped his fingers. ‘I don’t care that for you. I am thinking of her.’ ‘I don’t think that is at all a proper way to talk to a man about his wife, my dear boy.’ ‘Oh, damn!’ ‘By all means.’ Kirkdale walked towards Travers, who looked him straight in the face. After a prolonged stare they both burst out laughing. ‘O what fools we are! what fools we are!’ cried Kirkdale almost hysterically, as he flung himself into a chair. ‘Well, that’s agreed; now let’s clear the ground before us. You are in love with my wife; I am as much in love with her myself as the holy estate of matrimony will permit a man to be. She is in love with me, and not with you, unless I am very much deceived.’ ‘Yes, yes. I had no hope of that kind. I don’t know if you can understand or not, but I would do anything on earth to save her pain and to make her life happy.’ ‘The feeling does you honour, my dear boy. It is one often roused by unrequited affection. A woman who does not love you is always an angel, a woman who does is often a devil.’