"It would have been quite easy to let me know, wouldn't it?" He flung the question at his friend. "A sixpenny wire--even a cable wouldn't have ruined her, would it? And it would have been much less brutal than to let me come home expecting to find a blushing bride waiting for me!"

"I expect she ... she thought you'd see it in the papers," said Barry rather lamely. "Although it was kept pretty quiet here there were paragraphs about it, of course, and she may have supposed you would see them."

"Hardly the thing to leave it to chance," said Owen drily. "After all, when one gets out of an invitation to dinner, one generally sends an excuse; but ..." he broke off, and his eyes blazed suddenly "... look here, Barry, you know, and I know, that this woman has played a low-down trick on me. I thought her--well, no matter what I thought her--but anyway I know her now for what she is. And I'll be infinitely obliged to you if you'll be good enough to drop the subject now and for evermore."

"I say, old chap, I'm awfully sorry----"

Barry's impulsive speech got no further, for the other raised his hand to cut it short.

"All right, Barry, we'll take it all as said. Henceforth no such person as Miss Rees--I mean Lady Saxonby--exists for me; and if you'll remember that it will make things easier for us both."

"Very well, Owen." Barry felt emboldened to light a cigarette; and then, with a tactlessness born of mental discomfort, he asked a blundering question. "What shall you do now, old man? Have another shot at big game for a bit, or what?"

"Another shot--I say, Barry, why on earth should I go back the moment I've got home? Oh, I see!" He smiled cynically. "You mean town won't be very pleasant for a bit? Well, I daresay it won't, but thank G.o.d no one will dare to say much to me!" His jaw squared itself rather aggressively. "But I don't intend to quit. On the contrary, my firm intention is to remain here, do some good work, and, incidentally, marry."

Barry swung round and faced him, openly surprised.

"Marry? But--whom?"

"Oh, I don't know ... at the moment; but someone. You look astonished, Barry! Why shouldn't I marry? Ah, I see! You think because one woman's turned me down no one else will care to risk her happiness with me!

Well, of course my value is considerably depreciated, no doubt; but after all, men are in the minority, and I daresay I'll be able to find some girl to take pity on me!"

"Don't talk like that, Owen!" Barry spoke hastily, and his blue eyes looked rather stern. "You don't want a girl to take you out of pity, do you? That's not much of a basis for a happy marriage, is it?"

"No, Barry." He took the rebuke well. "I was talking like a fool. But honestly, I do mean to marry--as soon as possible. Oh, I daresay I'm taking it the wrong way, but it seems to me that there's only one thing for a man in my position to do, and that is to show that he's not heart-broken because one unscrupulous woman has treated him badly!"

"That's all very well--but what about the other woman? Are you going to marry the first girl you meet, irrespective of love, or what _are_ you going to do? I can understand your feeling for Miss Rees has changed its nature--love and hate are akin, I know, but still----"

"No, Barry, you're wrong." He spoke very gently. "I don't _hate_ Vivian.

Why should I? She merely exercised her feminine prerogative and changed her mind. Besides, one only hates big things. Vivian isn't big. She's very small, or she'd not have done this thing. If she'd asked me to release her, I'd have done it, and never have uttered a reproach. It's the heartlessness, the unnecessary cruelty of this that hurts me so. I loved her, Barry, and she knew it. Loved her in the right way, in the way a man should love the woman he's going to marry; and my love meant so little to her that she chucked it away without even telling me she was tired of it."

"But to marry, out of revenge, as it were, is small too."

"Out of revenge? Come, Barry, what are you thinking of?" Owen rose and spoke with an eerie joviality. "There'll be no revenge about it! Mayn't I marry and settle down like another man? I'll guarantee that the first woman who wants me can have me; and if she plays the game she shan't regret it, for I'll play it too!"

"But where will you look for her?" Barry could not understand this att.i.tude of mind.

"Look for her? Oh, I'll look for her all right--and she'll turn up, never fear!" He moved restlessly. "There's always some woman ready to enter a man's life when he throws the door ajar--and here I'm positively flinging it open, inviting the little dears to come in!"

"But, I say, Owen"--Barry looked anxiously at his friend--"you ... you'll be careful, won't you? I mean, you won't let any twopenny-halfpenny little chorus-girl, or ... or girl out of a shop come in, will you? You see, if you let them all know...."

"Chorus-girls are sometimes worth a good deal more than twopence-halfpenny," Owen reminded him quietly, "and I daresay a girl out of a shop would make a jolly decent wife. But I wasn't contemplating them when I spoke."

"Of course not," a.s.sented Barry hastily. "I only meant----"

"You only meant to give me good advice," said Owen, more kindly than he had yet spoken. "All right, old man, I understand. You must forgive me if I'm cross-grained to-night. You see I've had a shock----"

He broke off abruptly.

"There, I'm not going to whine about it. It's over, done with, and a new chapter's started." He yawned ostentatiously. "Barry, I shall call upon your good offices as best man yet--unless you hurry up and marry Miss Lynn first."

"Oh, Olive and I are in no hurry!" He laughed a trifle awkwardly. "You see, she is so young--only just eighteen--and her people won't hear of it for a couple of years."

"Well, that will soon pa.s.s." He turned towards the door. "I must be off now, Barry--it's late, and I'm pretty f.a.gged. See you in the morning, I suppose?"

"Of course. I say, Owen, sure you won't stay here to-night? I can give you a bed, you know."

"Thanks awfully, old chap, but I'd rather get home. I've heaps of things to see to. Thanks all the same."

Still talking, the friends crossed the hall, and Barry unlatched the door of the flat.

"Well, so-long, Barry. Awfully glad to have seen you again." He gripped the younger man's hand, and Barry understood what the grip implied.

"Good-night, Owen. See you to-morrow."

Two minutes later Owen had disappeared round a bend in the staircase; and Barry went slowly back into his sitting-room, feeling curiously tired, as though he had been indulging in some violent physical exercise.

"Poor old chap! What a beast that girl is!" He had never liked Miss Rees, and now felt, naturally, that his dislike was justified. "But I hope to goodness he doesn't go and do anything rash. He's got a pretty good head on him, though, and I daresay a lot of this talk is mere bravado."

He turned off the light and went into his bedroom. On the dressing-table stood a silver frame holding a photograph; and Barry took up the frame and studied the portrait carefully.

"Olive, you'd never play me a trick like that, would you! My G.o.d, I hope you don't! It would just about kill me to have to lose faith in you!"

The deep eyes looked up at him candidly, the sweet mouth seemed to smile; and with a sudden blissful certainty that the original of the photograph was as true and straightforward as the picture proclaimed her to be, Barry put down the frame again, and began, whistling, to prepare for bed.

CHAPTER III

A month later Barry relinquished his post as secretary to the man he called "old Joliffe," and announced himself to be from henceforth at Owen's disposal.

The review to which the latter had alluded was a long-standing ideal of Owen Rose's. From his earliest youth he had been attracted by the journalistic side of life, and seeing no means of editing a London daily at an early age, he had wisely determined to learn the whole business of newspaper journalism from the beginning. At the ago of eighteen he was sub-editor on a big provincial daily; but his brilliant and versatile intelligence soon wearied of the monotony of the life, and he came to London to demand the right of admittance into Fleet Street.

At that time, luckily for himself, he was on terms of friendship with a well-known editor; and what his own talent might have found difficulty in obtaining was placed unexpectedly within his reach. Before he was twenty-five he was well-known in the newspaper world; and since, on his twenty-fifth birthday, he came into possession of the comfortable income left to him by his father many years before, he was able to turn his back definitely on any soul-destroying drudgery and devote his time and brains to better work. Beneath his journalistic ability there was a sound and delicate literary _flair_; and it had long been his dream to found a magazine which, while neither commonplace nor unduly "precious,"

should hit a happy mean between the cheap magazines devoted to more or less poor fiction, and the somewhat pompous reviews which held up the light of learning and research in a rather severe and forbidding fashion.

He would have a little fiction--of the highest order. A comparatively large portion of the review was to be devoted to poetry, both as regarded original verse and the critical appreciation of modern poetry as a whole. Articles on art, music, the drama, were all to find a home in his pages; and there was to be a judicious sprinkling of science to add a little ballast to the lighter freight.

But what he intended to be the striking feature of the review was the tone which was to prevail throughout. It was to be warm, eager, enthusiastic, optimistic. He intended himself to write a series of articles dealing with the future in relation to the past. Each subject--music, literature, humanitarianism, mysticism, and a dozen others--would be treated in turn; and while in no wise belittling the magic inventiveness of an age which has given us an Edison, a Marconi, and a whole host of brilliant explorers, birdmen, and others equally daring and distinguished, he intended to remember always the enormous debt which we of this century owe to the glorious past.

Possibly in Owen's very enthusiasm, in the eager, ardent spirit of his dreams, there was more of the spirit of the future than of the past--but he intended to hold the balance as evenly as possible.

On one point he was firm. While hoping that his review would be in every way a serious contribution to the more valuable literature of the day, the literature which was worth something, he intended it to be strictly non-political. There would be no room within its covers for writers with axes to grind. No acrimonious discussions, thinly-veiled in pedantry, should mar the harmony of the pages; no party cries should echo from the editorial offices; and although he aimed, in some measure, at instructing and uplifting his readers, it was their betterment as human beings, rather than as citizens--so far as the two may be divorced--with which he intended to concern himself.

He was fortunate in his collaborators. At his back he had an old friend of his fathers', a gifted, if somewhat inarticulate, man of letters, who had longed, in his early life, for the opportunity to do what Owen was doing; and was generous enough to feel that, though his own working days were over, he might well use a little of his wealth in helping another man to realize their mutual dream.