“I’ve taken out a biggish life assurance policy, and the premiums will be a strain.  I paid the first yesterday.  I’m bled white.”

“Holy Moses!” exclaimed Mr. Alpha, shrugging his shoulders.

The flat was shortly afterwards to let.  The exclamation “Holy Moses!” may be in itself quite harmless, and innocuous to friendship, if it is pronounced in the right, friendly tone.  Unfortunately Mr. Alpha used it with a sarcastic inflection, implying that he regarded Mr. Omega as a prig, a fussy old person, a miser, a spoilsport, and, indeed, something less than a man.

“You can only live your life once,” said Mr. Alpha.

And they curved gradually apart.  This was in 1893.

II

Nearly twenty years later—­that is to say, not long since—­I had a glimpse of Mr. Alpha at a Saturday lunch.  Do not imagine that Mr. Alpha’s Saturday lunch took place in a miserable garret, amid every circumstance of failure and shame.  Success in life has very little to do with prudence.  It has a great deal to do with courage, initiative, and individual force, and also it is not unconnected with sheer luck.

Mr. Alpha had succeeded in life, and the lunch at which I assisted took place in a remarkably spacious and comfortable house surrounded by gardens, greenhouses, garages, stables, and all the minions necessary to the upkeep thereof.  Mr. Alpha was a jolly, a kind-hearted, an immensely clever, and a prolific man.  I call him prolific because he had five children.  There he was, with his wife and the five children; and they were all enjoying the lunch and themselves to an extraordinary degree.  It was a delight to be with them.

It is necessarily a delight to be with people who are intelligent, sympathetic and lively, and who have ample money to satisfy their desires.  Somehow you can hear the gold chinking, and the sound is good to the human ear.  Even the youngest girl had money in her nice new purse, to do with it as she liked.  For Mr. Alpha never stinted.  He was generous by instinct, and he wanted everybody to be happy.  In fact, he had turned out quite an unusual father.  At the same time he fell short of being an absolute angel of acquiescence and compliance.  For instance, his youngest child, a girl, broached the subject of music at that very lunch.  She was fourteen, and had shown some of her father’s cleverness at a school musical examination.  She was rather uplifted about her music.

“Can’t I take it up seriously, dad?” she said, with the extreme gravity of her years.

“Of course,” said he.  “The better you play, the more we shall all be pleased.  Don’t you think we deserve some reward for all we’ve suffered under your piano-practising?”

She blushed.

“But I mean seriously,” she insisted.

“Well, my pet,” said he, “you don’t reckon you could be a star pianist, do you?  Fifteen hundred dollars a concert, and so on?” And, as she was sitting next to him, he affectionately pinched her delicious ear.