And it was all, you couldn’t help feeling, so mean, such a humbug of a thing. I suppose, of course, that I was the only one besides Iris and Napier who knew of their departure together in three days’ time. “I have always wanted,” she had said to me, “to go to Rio, and then across the continent. One can’t _talk_ in Europe, it’s got so stuffy now. But I always thought I would keep the Americas until my fate should be fulfilled.” Yet, I was quite certain, every one at the table must have known that something was wrong, else why was that fell, beautiful lady there at all? For Guy, in the ordinary way, wouldn’t, it simply wasn’t in Guy’s nature to be able to, ask Iris Storm to the same dinner with the young wives of his two young friends, his _protégés_ almost, Napier and Hugo. And if he had asked Iris to-night, knowing that she wouldn’t funk coming--though the real reason why she had come was that Iris simply did not attach any importance to such things, “and besides,” she had said, “I want to see dear Hugo again, and as a married man”--it was just because he wanted Iris to realise the scene on which she was intruding so wickedly. It is such catholic cruelty as Guy’s that, by always lopping off the rotten limb, has kept the heritage of so many English houses almost, despite the common talk of the day, unimpaired. To-night he was wanting Iris to see that her old friends, her old playmates, Hugo and Napier, had grown up differently from her--better or worse, that wasn’t Guy’s point, but _differently_--that while she had lived according to her nature they had lived according to their country, they and their young wives, Shirley and Venice. Not the most prejudiced eye, Guy knew, could but see that they made a fine, harmonious, clean four. Youth was there, and simplicity, and friendship, and love, too. And Guy had dared Iris to come to the children’s party merely to say to her, with her eyes: “See, Iris, here are four people, two by two, happily paired, friends and lovers, husbands and wives. See, Iris, and let them be. One of these men you may be able to introduce to the magic mysteries of love more completely than his young wife ever can. But see, Iris, how much you deprive him of, how utterly you deprive her! You have put yourself outside this long ago, you never can be of this again. See, Iris, how happy they are, and young, and clean, and earnest to do right: most earnest to do right, Iris, despite the most damnable enchantments. And as they are so you might have been with Boy Fenwick, but you chose differently. Iris March, the death of Boy Fenwick puts you out of court. See, Iris, and for God’s sake let these children be!”