“And you used to rave against living like a gentleman,” thrust Grant maliciously.

Craig reddened.  “There it is!” he fairly shouted.  “I’m going to the devil.  I’m sacrificing all my principles.  That’s what this mixing with swell people and trying to marry a fashionable lady is doing for me!”

“You’re broadening out, you mean.  You’re losing your taste for tommy-rot.”

“Not at all,” said Craig surlily and stubbornly.  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.  I’m going to see the girl to-day and put the whole case before her.  And I want you to back me up.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” cried Grant.  “How can you ask such a thing of me?”

“Yes, you must go with me to-day.”

“I’ve got an engagement—­garden-party at the British Embassy.”

“Going there, are you? ...  Um! ...  Well, we’ll see.”

The breakfast came and Craig ate like a ditch-digger—­his own breakfast and most of Grant’s.  Grant barely touched the food, lit a cigarette, sat regarding the full-mouthed Westerner gloomily.  “What did Margaret see in this man?” thought Grant.  “True, she doesn’t know him as well as I do; but she knows him well enough.  Talk about women being refined!  Why, they’ve got ostrich stomachs.”

“Do you know, Grant,” said Craig thickly, so stuffed was his mouth, “I think your refined women like men of my sort.  I know I can’t bear anything but refined women.  Now, you—­you’ve got an ostrich stomach.  I’ve seen you quite pleased with women I’d not lay my finger on.  Yet most people’d say you were more sensitive than I. Instead, you’re much coarser—­except about piffling, piddling, paltry non-essentials.  You strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.  I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if Margaret had penetrated the fact that your coarseness is in-bred while mine is near surface.  Women have a surprising way of getting at the bottom of things.  I’m a good deal like a woman in that respect myself.”

Grant thrust a cigar upon him, got him out of the room and on the way out of the house as quickly as possible.  “Insufferable egotist!” he mumbled, by way of a parting kick.  “Why do I like him?  Damned if I believe I do!”

He did not dress until late that afternoon, but lay in his rooms, very low and miserable.  When he issued forth it was to the garden-party—­and immediately he ran into Margaret and Craig, apparently lying in wait for him.  “Here he is!” exclaimed Josh, slapping him enthusiastically on the back.  “Grant, Margaret wants to talk with you.  I must run along.”  And before either could speak he had darted away, plowing his way rudely through the crowd.

Margaret and Grant watched his progress—­she smiling, he surly and sneering.  “Yet you like him,” said Margaret.

“In a way, yes,” conceded Arkwright.  “He has a certain sort of magnetism.”  He pulled himself up short.  “This morning,” said he, “I apologized to him for my treachery; and here I am at it again.”