“I’m not taking leave of freedom.  You godless bachelors don’t know you’re born.”

“Bluff—­bluff!” declared Neddy.  “You can’t deceive me, old sport.”

“You wait till you find the right one.”

“I shall,” promised Neddy.  “And very well content to wait.  Nothing is easier than not to be married.”

“Nothing is harder, my dear chap, if you’re in love with the right girl.”

Neddy felt the ground delicate.  He knew that Raymond had knocked down a man for insulting him a week before, so he changed the subject.

“I thought you’d be at the fight,” he said.  “It was a pretty spar—­interesting all through.  Jack Buckler won.  Blades practically let him.  Not because he wanted to, but because Solly Blades has got a streak of softness in his make-up.  That’s fatal in a fighter.  If you’ve got a gentle heart, it don’t matter how clever you are:  you can’t take full advantage of your skill and use the opening when you’ve won it.  Blades didn’t punish Buckler’s stupidity, or weakness just when he could have done it.  So he lost, because he gave Jack time to get strong again; and when Blades in his turn went weak, Buckler got it over and outed him.”

“Your heart often robs you of what your head won,” said another man in the bar.  “Life’s like prize-fighting in that respect.  If you don’t hit other people when you can, the time will probably come when they’ll hit you.”

It was an ugly philosophy and Raymond, looking within, applied to it himself.  Then he put his own thoughts away.

“And how are the gee-gees?” he asked.

“As a ‘gentleman backer,’ I can’t say I’m going very strong,” confessed Neddy.  “On the whole, I think it’s a mug’s game.  Anyway, I shall chuck it when flat racing comes again.  My father’s getting restive.  I shall have to do something pretty soon.”

Raymond stayed for an hour and was again urged to give a bachelor-supper before he married; but he declined.

“Shan’t chuck away a tenner on a lot of wasters,” he said.  “Got something better to do with it.”

Several men promised to come to church and see the event, now near at hand, but he told them that they might be disappointed.

“I’m not too sure about that,” he said.  “I may put my foot down on that racket and be married at a registrar’s.  Anyway church is no certainty.  I’ve got no use for making a show of my private affairs.”

On the way to Miss Ironsyde’s he grew moody and gloom settled upon him.  A glimpse of the old free and easy life threw into darker colours the new existence ahead.  He remembered the sentiments of the strange man in the bar—­how weakness is always punished and the heart often robs the head of victory.  His heart was robbing his head of freedom; and that meant victory also; for what sort of success can life offer to those who begin it by flinging liberty to the winds?  Yes, he had been “bluffing,” as Neddy declared; and to bluff was foreign to his nature.  Nobody was deceived, for everybody knew the truth, and though none dared laugh at him in public, secretly all his acquaintance were doubtless doing so.