“You, Fred, you—your delight in life is to weigh in delicate scales one thing against another, and then choose by applying certain rules which you fancy you obey. But you don’t obey them, not you. No man could. We’re all creatures of impulse. Reason is only useful for getting us out of scrapes which are the result of our own or others’ mistakes. Why should I _worry_? I’ve got everything I want; money, power, a comfortable house, a pretty wife. Good Lord, what would be the use of deliberately shoving a fly into my own honey?” “Yours is a fair-weather philosophy.” “It’s brought me through a good many hours of foul weather. You know something about business, though your father—luckily for you—knows more. You know I’ve not built up my business without nearly running on rocks sometimes. Last year it was almost a toss-up whether I came a colossal smash or not.” “Last year!” “Last year.” “But last year——” “Oh, yes,” West broke in, “I know what you’re going to say. Last year I gave ten thousand pounds to a Royal charity fund. People said I did it to buy a knighthood. I did it to set my credit above suspicion. It saved me.” “I’ve never heard you talk about business before.” “Very likely not. I don’t often talk ‘shop.’ Does it bore you?” “No, I like hearing men talk shop.” “I wish I had been married then,” West said, lying back on the sofa and watching the smoke from his cigar as it drifted across to the fire. “A business man ought to have a home that keeps him—so to speak—out of his office.” “And a wife to share his anxieties?” “H’m—I don’t know that. Perhaps it would help.” He knocked the ash off his cigar, got up and began pacing slowly up and down the long room. “That’s just the difference between us, Fred. You’d weigh the woman you thought of marrying in those silly scales of yours, and if you found her short weight in any particular would fight shy. I’ve human impulses and follow them. When they get me into a mess I get out of it as well as I can. You spend so much of time in avoiding messes that you’ll never get into anything else.” “I don’t seem to have many impulses left.” “Rats! You don’t know anything about yourself—you analytical gents never do. Or else, which I suspect is more true, you don’t want anyone else to know you have just ordinary, human impulses. I believe you’re a sentimental old humbug. Come to bed.” CHAPTER VIII MARIAN understood that if her bargain with Maddison was to last, it must be made satisfying to him as well as to herself. She did not think that because the first skirmish had been won the remainder of the campaign would be easy and necessarily victorious. She rejoiced in having won her freedom from the shackles of matrimony, but did not overlook the fact that her foothold in her new world was precarious, and that a single false step might bring her to trouble far worse than that from which she had escaped.