Now I wonder how many thousands of men are at this very moment putting that question to thousands of men; yet that, if nothing else, would have made that night significant in my life, for never before had the solitary asked me or, I think, any one to have a drink with him. Nor would he, as a rule, have a drink if you suggested it. And once, at a party I gave, he had some gingerbeer. But, even so, I had to say I couldn’t, pleading that I would be too late for dinner. “With Hilary,” I said, and he scowled absently in a way he had, and lounged up the road with me. Thoughtful he was always. That was a curious, capacious evening. The Marches were gathered together that evening, they who were never let off anything. As Gerald lounged beside me the great primrose car with the menacing shining bonnet passed us as silently as though Curzon Street was a carpet. It was empty but for a boyish chauffeur. Gerald, I suppose, did not know it, and I did not remark on it. I wondered if Iris had surprised Mrs. Oden by returning suddenly. Poor Mr. Oden.... “What have you been doing with yourself lately, Gerald?” “Doing?” His eyes pierced the pavement the other side of my shoulder, for tall was Gerald. He grinned.... “You’d never guess,” he grinned. I did not like this grinning. It was unusual in Gerald. It was like a crooked mask on the fine dark face. There was by ordinary no grinning froth about Gerald ... and, somehow, it crossed my mind that maybe Gerald was hard-up. I asked him, oh, tentatively, if anything was “up.” “Up? The hell’s up. O Jesu!” And he grinned.... “Yes, but besides that--anything?” Not, you know, that I thought for one moment that anything really was “up.” It was merely that I misliked that grinning. I can see him this moment so clearly, the way he suddenly threw back his head and stared from under the brim of that hat as though into the heart of the heavens: the dark, defiant, hungry silhouette searching the heart of the above. We were at the corner of East Chapel Street, where the great American pile of Sunderland House debases itself before the puny roofs of Mayfair: it loitered clumsily against the soft evening light, reluctant to yield to the grey embrace of London.... “God!” sighed Gerald. Like a child, like a child ... and like a fiend he suddenly laughed up at the veiled heavens. “Imagine, you fool, just imagine the bloody degradation of being alive!” But I will leave out Gerald’s “bloody’s.” One is tired of saying, hearing, reading that silly word. It is only chickenfood, after all, and does very well on the lips of the young ladies of the day, but there is no reason why grown-up people should use it.