The lover rose, opened the drawer of a writing-table, and took out a photograph, a very modern affair, of most artistic mounting.  He handed it jealously to Desmond and was silent while the other man looked.  The girl’s face, wondrously young and untroubled, frail, angelic, rose from a slender neck and shoulders swathed in a light gauze cloud.  Her gay eyes gazed straight out.  Rokeby looked longer than he knew, very thoughtfully, and Osborn put his hand upon the portrait, pulled it away as jealously as he had given it, and said: 

“They’ve almost done her justice for once.”

“Top-hole, old man,” Rokeby replied sympathetically.

CHAPTER II

IRREVOCABLE

When Osborn dressed for his wedding he felt in what he called first-class form.  He thought great things of life; life had been amazingly decent to him throughout.  It had never struck him any untoward blow.  The death of his parents had been sadness, certainly, but it was a natural calamity, the kind every sane man expected sooner or later and braced himself for.  His mother had left him a very little money, and his father had left him a very little money; small as the sum total was, it gave a man the comfortable impression of having private means.  He paid the first instalments on the dream-flat’s furniture with it, and there was some left still, to take Marie and him away on a fine honey-moon, and to brighten their first year with many jollities.  His salary was all right for a fellow of his age.  Marie was not far wrong when she said that they were starting “awfully well.”

Osborn sang: 

  “And—­when—­I—­tell—­them,
  And I’m certainly going to tell them,
  That I’m the man whose wife you’re one day going to be,
  They’ll never believe me—­”

That latest thing in revue songs fitted the case to a fraction.  He was the luckiest man in the whole great round world.

Osborn was pleased with his reflection in the glass.  For his wedding he had bought his first morning-coat and silk hat.  He had been as excited as a girl.  He had a new dress-suit, too, and a dinner-jacket from the best tailor in town, ready packed for travelling.  He had been finicking over his coloured shirts, handkerchiefs, and socks; a set of mauve, a set of blue, a set of grey; the brown set with the striped shirt; they were all awf’ly smart.  Marie was so dainty, she liked a man to be smart, too.  All he wanted was to please her.

Rokeby came early, as quiet and lacklustre as ever.  He sat down in the obvious lodging-house bedroom, lighted a cigarette and looked at Osborn without a smile.  He prepared himself to be bored and amazed; weddings, tiresome as they were, always amazed him.  And he was prepared, too, for a settled insanity in Osborn until—­

“I wonder how long he’ll be?” Rokeby thought.

“I’ve finished packing,” said Osborn, clapping his old brushes together; the new ones lay among the new suits.  “It’s time we started, almost, isn’t it?”