“He had too much champagne last night—­though, as for that matter, I’ve seen him upset by a cocktail—­and afterward at billiards he told Skinker that—­that Mrs. Adams—­you understand, old chap, it’s all his rot—­was going to supper alone with him to-night—­in his rooms after the opera.  Of course he was drunk and I wouldn’t bet a cent on his word even when he’s sober.  He’s the kind of fool that tells of his conquests at the club,” he wound up with scathing contempt.

For a moment Adams, looking away from him, stared silently into a shop window before which he stood—­intent apparently upon the varied display of antique silver.  Then he turned squarely to Perry Bridewell and broke into a short, hard laugh.

“Well, Brady lied,” he said.  “I promised Mrs. Adams that I would bring her home from the opera.”  It was no hesitation in his own voice, but the joyful relief which shone at him from Perry’s face that brought him suddenly to a stop.  “You were a first-rate fellow to come to me,” he went on more quietly.  “Of course, you know, our Western conventions are much more elastic than your New York ones.  All the same—­”

“I merely wanted to let her know the kind of man he is,” explained Perry.  “What do women understand about the men they meet—­why, we all look pretty much alike upon the surface.”  Then his righteous anger got the better of his philosophy and he broke out in a heartfelt oath.  “Damn him!  I’d like to thrash him clean out of his skin!”

“I am glad you told me,” was all Adams said, but there was a reserved strength in his voice which made the explosive violence of the other sound the merest bravado.  As he spoke the light flashed in his face, and Perry saw that it was the face of an old and a tired man.  There was a shrinking in his eyes as of one who has stumbled unexpectedly upon a revolting sight.

Of the many and varied emotions which had entered Perry’s life, the cleanest, perhaps, was his loyal regard for Roger Adams.  It had begun with his college days, had strengthened with his manhood, and had lasted, in spite of the amiable contempt in which he held all literature, with a constancy which had certainly not belonged to his affairs with representatives of the opposite sex.  Now as he looked at Adams’ haggard face under the electric light, he felt the tugging of a sympathy so strong that it seemed to hurt him somewhere in his expansive chest.

“Look here, old chap, come and dine with me at Sherry’s,” he burst out, “and I’ll telephone Gerty that I’ve thrown over that beastly dinner.”

To offer something to eat to the afflicted was the solitary form in which consolation appeared to him invested with solidity; and so earnest was the generous impulse by which he now felt himself to be prompted, that before Adams could reply to the invitation he had begun already to run over mentally the courses he was prepared to order.  For a colossal, a consolatory, an unforgettable dinner he was determined that it should be—­such a dinner as he permitted himself only upon the rare occasions when one of his intimate friends had lost heavily in stocks or been abandoned by his wife.  “Come to Sherry’s,” he urged again, halting in the ecstatic working of his mind, “and I promise you that we will make an evening.”