“It’s like this,” Mr. Fall addressed Tarlyon. “I asked you to dinner, Lord Tarlyon, not only because of the very real pleasure I take in your company, but because I want your advice--your advice,” said Mr. Fall, “as an Englishman of honour. And for yours, too, Mr. Trevor, I shall be very much obliged. Have some brandy.” “You see,” said Mr. Fall, “I am not a gentleman. I am not even quite a gentleman. My birth and upbringing, though they have fitted me for very much, have not fitted me to decide on certain matters with that clearness of vision and decision which I find so admirable in men of breeding....” Tarlyon made a faint noise which sounded like “Ah....” “To men like you,” Mr. Fall continued, “there are not two ways of doing a thing: there is only a right way; and that, with you, is the instinctive way. Whereas for me there is also the right way, but there are other ways as well, and sometimes I find myself wandering up these other ways and wondering if they are not quite as right as the right way, even though they are more convenient. In matters of policy there are two sides to every question; and I sometimes wonder if, in matters of honour, there are not also two sides to every question....” “There are,” said George Tarlyon. “But one of them is a precipice....” “Exactly, Lord Tarlyon. And that is why I am about to put before you the case of myself and a lady, as discreetly as possible of course, so that you can advise me what to do--as a man of honour. Or rather, so that you can support me in going on doing what I am already doing, or encourage me to change my course towards what, I frankly admit, will be a happy fulfilment for me. Have some brandy.” Mr. Fall, in the interests of his country at war, had frequently had occasion to voyage on board a cruiser of His Majesty’s Fleet, and had thus acquired that finished courtesy which presumes a man has drunk nothing before the glass you are offering him. “I may say,” Mr. Fall continued, “that at the age of fifty-two I know as little about ladies as I did when I was twenty, when I didn’t know any. Perhaps it is because I have always been a very busy man, perhaps it is because I do not attract them enough----” “Or perhaps it’s because you attract them too much,” Tarlyon suggested. “Of course,” Mr. Fall admitted, “one is agreeable financially; and a knowledge of that fact has sometimes, I am afraid, caused me to reconsider an invitation to dinner which the night before had seemed full of friendship, and, perhaps, possibilities of a kind which I am not too old to think romantic. However....” III