“There are only three things worth while--fighting, drinking, and making love.” It was Chalmers who said it to me as we came out of the theatre, and were idling along towards the club. We had been seeing a very handsome--almost elegant--melodrama. Very impressionable chap, Chalmers, I thought, for I was quite sure that he had never done any fighting; he was apparently a total abstainer; and he positively ran--as whole-heartedly as a frightened cow--from a petticoat. “What about work?” I asked, as we turned into the club. Chalmers is a fiend for work: always shut up in his laboratory, dry-nursing an experiment. “Work is an anodyne--a blooming anodyne.” He hunched his shoulders, and his brown coat--the coat of a toilsome recluse, if ever there was one; there’s something peculiarly unworldly about brown tweed for a man’s wear--creased into lumpier curves than ever. “It’s a mighty slow one. If I wanted a quick effect, I think I’d take to cocaine. Must be exciting, slewing round the corners of Montmartre, dropping your francs into a basket that swings down from God knows where, with the blessed stuff all in it waiting to be inhaled. And all over inside of a year.” Thus I to Chalmers, knowing that we were very far from Montmartre. Chalmers, I should say, was magnificently dependable; you were as safe in dropping a lurid suggestion on him as on the shell of an ancient turtle. I rather liked that idea, which struck me just then; in fact, his clothes were much the color of tortoise-shell. “But I don’t want it over. You see ... I’ve agreed to hang on.” His keen glance at me, more than his words, savored of explanation. “Oh!” I made the syllable as non-committal as possible. The lips at one moment so fluent in confession will grow stiff with resentment after the hour of confidence is over. For that reason, I dislike to have people tell me things: I always expect that they will some day hate me, merely because they told. We sat down at a table, and I ordered a high-ball. Chalmers fussed for a moment, and then committed himself to a _pâté_ sandwich with apollinaris. I didn’t think of asking him to join me. We had been trying for five years to get Chalmers to take a drink. For a year, there were always bets going on it; but it had been a long time now since any of us had made or lost anything on the chance of Chalmers’s potations.