Why didn’t he marry her? Hugh twirled his moustache. Selina knew the way. Began to look dangerous. He supposed that was what everybody was asking. There was no question of marriage between them. Never had been. Never would be. He drank off his coffee, threw away his cigar, and put his hands in his pockets. He worshipped the ground she trod on, said he; would give up his life for her any day. But no idea of marriage. “Why not?” asked Mrs. Harroway, wide-eyed. “I don’t know. How should I? I said it was his duty. Replies that he knows where his duty lies. I suggest that society demands it. He damns society. I get him to listen to me. Tell him about Chevasse. He looks at me with those blue sword-blade eyes of his, just as he looked at Hanna at the trial. ‘It’s for her sake,’ I said. ‘Pardon an old friend’s bluntness.’ ‘Of course I pardon anything you choose to say, you know that well enough,’ he replied. So I went on; told him that every woman in her position was not offered such a chance of social recognition. He calls the waiter, tosses him some silver, waves him away with a lordly gesture as he fumbles for change, and gets up. I accompany him to the street. ‘It’s very good of your wife and Chevasse--tell them so,’ says he, ‘but I’m not going to do it.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s scarcely honourable, Hugh.’ Whereupon he grips me on the shoulder--the rheumatic one, my dear; I feel it now--and bawls out, ‘Damn it, man, if you think me an infernal blackguard say so at once.’ I was nettled--also in physical pain--so I did say it. And then he gave his shoulders a shrug and stalked away like a madman.” Mrs. Harroway looked at him demurely. “I suppose you think you managed it all beautifully.” Then she laughed. But Harroway got up indignant. “Hang it all, Selina!” he exclaimed, “I did expect a little sympathy from you.” Whereupon she mollified him, so that he should eat his dinner with an unruffled mind, and thus avoid indigestion. A wife’s thoughtfulness is often very far-reaching. Meanwhile Hugh had marched away in great wrath from his friend and benefactor. A man in a false position is apt to be unreasonable. Harroway should have taken it for granted he was acting honourably to Irene. Society generally ought to take it for granted. The irony of his friends’ kind suggestion was a red rag to his anger. Marry her! It was a palpitating vision of a paradise in this world for which he would cheerfully accept damnation in the next. Even were he not tied to Minna for life, and were free to ask Irene, sheer honour and loyalty forbade him to go to her with protestations of passion. She did not love him in the common way of women. Thus there was a double barrier to the fool wish of that composite fool society! And the maddening part of it was the impossibility of saying the words and bringing forward the proofs to convince it of its folly.