He looked himself anxiously over and inquired whether there was anything wrong.  I assured him of the impeccability of his attire, and commented on its splendour.

“Are you going to take Maisie out to lunch?”

He started and reddened beneath his dark skin.  Before he could speak I laid my hand on his shoulder.

“I’m an old friend, Dale.  You mustn’t be angry with me.  But don’t you think you’re treating Maisie rather badly?”

“You’ve no right to say so,” he burst out hotly.  “No one has the right to say so.  There was never a question of an engagement between Maisie and myself.”

“Then there ought to have been,” I said judicially.  “No decent man plays fast and loose with a girl and throws her over just at the moment when he ought to be asking her to marry him.”

“I suppose my mother’s been at you.  That’s what she wanted to see you about yesterday.  I wish to God she would mind her own business.”

“And that I would mind mine?”

Dale did not reply.  For some odd reason he is devotedly attached to me, and respects my opinion on worldly matters.  He walked to the window and looked out.  Presently, without turning round, he said: 

“I suppose she has been rubbing it in about Lola Brandt?”

“She did mention the lady’s name,” said I.  “So did Renniker at the club.  I suppose every one you know and many you don’t are mentioning it.”

“Well, what if they are?”

“They’re creating an atmosphere about your name which is scarcely that in which to make an entrance into public life.”

Still with his back turned, he morosely informed me in his vernacular that he contemplated public life with feelings of indifference, and was perfectly prepared to abandon his ambitions.  I took up my parable, the same old parable that wise seniors have preached to the deluded young from time immemorial.  I have seldom held forth so platitudinously even in the House of Commons.  I spoke as impressively as a bishop.  In the midst of my harangue he came and sat by the library table and rested his chin on his palm, looking at me quietly out of his dark eyes.  His mildness encouraged me to further efforts.  I instanced cases of other young men of the world who had gone the way of the flesh and had ended at the devil.

There was Paget, of the Guards, eaten to the bone by the Syren—­not even the gold lace on his uniform left.  There was Merridew, once the hope of the party, now living in ignoble obscurity with an old and painted mistress, whom he detested, but to whom habit and sapped will-power kept him in thrall.  There was Bullen, who blew his brains out.  In a generous glow I waxed prophetic and drew a vivid picture of Dale’s moral, mental, physical, financial, and social ruin, and finished up in a masterly peroration.

Then, without moving, he calmly said: 

“My dear Simon, you are talking through your hat!”