“D’you know the legend of the halcyon?” said Athelny:  Philip was growing used to his rapid leaping from one subject to another.  “When the kingfisher, flying over the sea, is exhausted, his mate places herself beneath him and bears him along upon her stronger wings.  That is what a man wants in a wife, the halcyon.  I lived with my first wife for three years.  She was a lady, she had fifteen hundred a year, and we used to give nice little dinner parties in our little red brick house in Kensington.  She was a charming woman; they all said so, the barristers and their wives who dined with us, and the literary stockbrokers, and the budding politicians; oh, she was a charming woman.  She made me go to church in a silk hat and a frock coat, she took me to classical concerts, and she was very fond of lectures on Sunday afternoon; and she sat down to breakfast every morning at eight-thirty, and if I was late breakfast was cold; and she read the right books, admired the right pictures, and adored the right music.  My God, how that woman bored me!  She is charming still, and she lives in the little red brick house in Kensington, with Morris papers and Whistler’s etchings on the walls, and gives the same nice little dinner parties, with veal creams and ices from Gunter’s, as she did twenty years ago.”

Philip did not ask by what means the ill-matched couple had separated, but Athelny told him.

“Betty’s not my wife, you know; my wife wouldn’t divorce me.  The children are bastards, every jack one of them, and are they any the worse for that?  Betty was one of the maids in the little red brick house in Kensington.  Four or five years ago I was on my uppers, and I had seven children, and I went to my wife and asked her to help me.  She said she’d make me an allowance if I’d give Betty up and go abroad.  Can you see me giving Betty up?  We starved for a while instead.  My wife said I loved the gutter.  I’ve degenerated; I’ve come down in the world; I earn three pounds a week as press agent to a linendraper, and every day I thank God that I’m not in the little red brick house in Kensington.”

Sally brought in Cheddar cheese, and Athelny went on with his fluent conversation.

“It’s the greatest mistake in the world to think that one needs money to bring up a family.  You need money to make them gentlemen and ladies, but I don’t want my children to be ladies and gentlemen.  Sally’s going to earn her living in another year.  She’s to be apprenticed to a dressmaker, aren’t you, Sally?  And the boys are going to serve their country.  I want them all to go into the Navy; it’s a jolly life and a healthy life, good food, good pay, and a pension to end their days on.”