‘How do you do, William?’ I said, extending my hand, deciding as I did so that I would not give him any other kind of salute after all.  Yet it was with a tinge of regret I thought of that nice mouth of his hidden under such a rank undergrowth of whisker.

Marion looked on complacently as I greeted him.  I remembered then that she had rather seemed to resent the sisterly salute I thought necessary to bestow on him after the wedding, and the brotherly salutes (repeated four times in succession) he had given me in return.  I decided at that moment I would respect her objections and only shake hands with William in future.  I am sure she preferred it, and I should hate to displease her.

Besides, beards do rasp one so.

Henry now emerged from the study full of hearty greeting and bonhomie.  He seemed less surprised at William’s altered appearance than I did, and was certainly more pleased about it.

‘What made you let him do it?’ I said reproachfully to Marion when we were alone, ‘he was a really handsome man before, and now——­’

‘That’s just it,’ she interrupted, ’he was too handsome, and it wasn’t safe for him.’

‘Not safe, Marion?’

’Women wouldn’t leave him alone—­they all flirted with him.  It would have been all right if he’d been used to it before, but getting good-looking so suddenly unbalanced him.  From a kind of puzzled wonder that he should thus attract the opposite sex, he began to develop an interest in what he termed “their bewildering number of types.”  He said he used to think they were all exactly alike.  It was when he declared his intention of writing a eulogy on woman that I stepped in and insisted on his letting his beard grow again.  Don’t you think I acted for the best?’

‘No doubt you did,’ I said pensively, ’but he had such an attractive mouth.’

Marion regarded me severely.  ’That’s what all the other women seemed to think.  I feel I was justified in protecting him.’

‘No doubt you were, dear,’ I murmured, with meekly lowered eyes.  ‘Don’t you ever regret him as he was before?’

She sighed a little.  ’Sometimes—­particularly when dear William was just beginning to grow again—­did I have my qualms of discouragement.  A beard in its incipient stages is an unbecoming, almost startling affair, Netta.  Then of course, I find solace by looking at this,’ and she held out a small locket containing a portrait of William in his glorified state.  ’Also I always keep his white spats and lavender gloves as a remembrance.’

There was a hint of sadness in the idea.  It seemed almost as if William was dead—­one phase of him was, at all events.

‘Then you do regret——­’ I began.

‘I regret nothing, Netta,’ she broke in very decidedly.  ’I am now getting quite reconciled to dear William’s present appearance, and I know he’s happier in his natural state.’