“You’re the truest, most reliable thing in the world,” said Esther; “I always think of you as something strong and true to come to—­”

“Except Mike!”

“No, not even except Mike.  We’ll call it a draw—­dear little Mike!  To think of him going further and further away every minute!  I wonder where he is by now.  He must have reached Rugby long since.”

At that moment the waiter ventured to approach with a silver tray.  A telegram,—­it was indeed a telegram of tears and distance from Mike, given in at Rugby.  Even so long parted and so far away, Mike was still true.  He had not yet forgotten!

These young people were great extravagants of the emotional telegram.  They were probably among the earliest to apply electricity for heart-breaking messages.  Some lovers feel it a profanation thus to reveal their souls beneath the eye of a telegraph-operator; but the objection of delicacy ceases if you can regard the operator in his actual capacity as a part of the machine.  French perhaps is an advisable medium; though, if the operator misunderstands it, your love is apt to take strange forms at its destination, and if he understands it, you may as well use English at once.

“Dear Mike!  God bless him!” and they pledged Mike in Esther’s favourite champagne.  The wives of great actor-managers must early inure themselves to champagne.

“But if you’re jealous of Mike,” said Esther, presently, taking up the dropped thread of their talk; “what about Angel?”

“Of course it was only nonsense,” said Henry.  “I know you love Angel far too much to be jealous of her, as I love Mike; and that’s just the beautiful harmony of it all.  We are just a little impregnable world of four,—­four loving hearts against the world.”

“How clever it was of you to find Angel!”

“I found Mike, too!” said Henry, laughing.

“Oh, yes, I know; but then I discovered you.”

“Ah, but a still higher honour belongs to me, for I discovered you,” retorted Henry.  “When you consider that I discovered three such wonderful persons as you and Angel and Mike, don’t you think, on the whole, that I’m singularly modest?”

“Do you love me?” said Esther, presently, quite irrelevantly.

“Do you love me?”

“I asked first.”

“Well, for the sake of argument, let us say ‘yes.’”

“How much?”

“As big as the world.”

“Oh, well, then, let’s have some Benedictine with the coffee!” said Esther.

“I’ve thought of something better, more ‘sacramental,’” said Henry, smiling, “but you couldn’t conscientiously drink it with me.  It’s the red drink of perfect love.  Will you drink it with me?”

“Of course I will.”

So the waiter brought a bottle bearing the beautiful words, “Parfait Amour.”

“It’s like blood,” said Esther; “it makes me a little frightened.”

“Would you rather not drink it?” asked Henry.  “You know if you drink it with me, you must drink it with no one else.  It is the law of it that we can only drink it with one.”