Huntington was convinced by this time that Cosden was seriously in earnest. He had believed that he knew his friend well enough not to be surprised at anything he said or did, but now he found himself not only surprised, but distinctly shocked. He had joked with Cosden when he first spoke of marriage, but in his heart he regarded it with a sentimentality which no one of his friends suspected because of the cynicisms which always sprang to his lips when the subject was mentioned. He believed himself to have had a romance, and during these years its memory still obtained from him a sacred observance which he had successfully concealed from all the world. So, when Cosden coolly announced that he had decided to select a wife just as he would have picked out a car-load of pig iron, Huntington's first impulse was one of resentment.

"It seems to me that you are proposing a partnership rather than a marriage," he remarked.

"What else is marriage?" Cosden demanded. "You've hit it exactly. I wouldn't take a man into business with me simply because I liked him, but because I believed that he more than any one else could supplement my work and extend my horizon. Marriage is the apotheosis of partnership, and its success depends a great deal more upon the psychology of selection than upon sentiment."

Huntington made no response. The first shock was tempered by his knowledge of Cosden's character. It was natural that he should have arrived at this conclusion, the older man told himself, and it was curious that the thought had not occurred to Huntington sooner that the days of their bachelor companionship must inevitably be numbered. There was nothing else which Connie could wish for now: he had his clubs, his friends, and ample means to gratify every desire; a home with wife and children was really needed to complete the success which he had made. He had proved himself the best of friends, which was a guarantee that he would make a good husband. Huntington found himself echoing Cosden's question, "Why not?"

"Have you selected the happy bride, Connie?" he asked at length, more seriously.

"Only tentatively," was the complacent reply. "I met a girl in New York last winter, and it seems to me she couldn't be improved upon if she had been made to order; but I want to look the ground over a bit, and that is where you come in. Her name is Marian Thatcher, and—"

"Thatcher—Marian Thatcher!" Huntington interrupted unexpectedly. "From New York? Why—no, that would be ridiculous! Is she a widow?"

Cosden chuckled. "Not yet, and if she marries me it will be a long time before she gets a chance to wear black. What put that idea in your head?"

"Nothing," Huntington hastened to say. "I knew a girl years ago named Marian who married a man named Thatcher, and they lived in New York."

"She is about twenty years old—"

"Not the same," Huntington remarked. Then after a moment's silence he laughed. "What tricks Time plays us! I knew the girl I speak of when I was in college, and I haven't seen her since her marriage. Go on with your proposition."

"Well, she and her parents went down to Bermuda last week, and it occurred to me that if you and I just happen down there next week it would exactly fit into my plans. More than that, I have business reasons for wanting to get closer to Thatcher himself. We've been against each other on several deals, and this might mean a combination. What do you say? Will you go?"

"Next week?" Huntington asked. "I couldn't pick up stakes in a minute like that."

"Of course you can," Cosden persisted. "There's nothing in the world to prevent your leaving to-night if you choose."

"There's Bill, you know."

"Well, what about Bill? Is he in any new scrape now?"

"No," Huntington admitted; "but he's sure to get into some trouble before I return."

"Why can't his father straighten him out?"

Huntington laughed consciously. "No father ever understands his son as well as an uncle."

"No father ever spoiled a son the way you spoil Bill—"

Huntington held up a restraining hand. "It is only the boy's animal spirits bubbling over," he interrupted, "and the fact that he can't grow up. You and I were in college once ourselves."

Huntington was never successful in holding out against Cosden's persistency, and in the present case elements existed which argued with almost equal force. He was curious to see how far his friend was in earnest, and was this combination of names a pure coincidence? He wondered.

The car came to a stop before Huntington's house.

"Well," he yielded at length, as he stepped out, "I presume it might be arranged.—Let Mason take you home. You've given me a lot to think over, Connie—"

"This wouldn't break up our intimacy, you understand," Cosden asserted confidently. "No woman in the world shall ever do that; and it will be a good thing for you, too, to have a woman's influence come into your life."

"Perhaps," Huntington assented dubiously; "but because you show symptoms of lapsing is no sign that I shall fall from the blessed state of bachelorhood. I supposed that our inoculation made us both immune, but if the virus has weakened in your system I have no doubt that any woman you select will have a heart big enough for us both."

"If she hasn't, we won't take her into the firm," laughed Cosden.

II

Huntington was unusually preoccupied during the period of dinner. Even when alone he was in the habit of making the evening meal a function, in which his man Dixon and his cook took especial pride. But to-night the words of praise or gentle criticism were lacking, one course succeeding another mechanically without comment of any kind. When Dixon followed him up-stairs to the library with coffee and liqueur he found him with his Transcript still unfolded lying in his lap; and, whatever may have happened in the mean time, the same attitude of abstraction prevailed when Dixon returned, three hours later, received his final instructions, and was dismissed for the night. Cosden had undoubtedly dropped off into that slumber which belongs by right to the man whose day has presented him with a brilliant inspiration; but Huntington still sat alone, absorbed in his own thoughts.

The chronicler has already intimated that Huntington was possessed of a sentimental nature, but were he to stop there he would understate the real truth. Huntington was exceedingly sentimental—far more so than he himself realized, which made it natural that his friends should be deceived. He was a bachelor not from choice, as he would have the world think, but from circumstance, and the absence of home and wife and children represented the one lack in an otherwise entirely satisfactory career. It was the only thing his father had not provided for him, and he himself had not possessed sufficient energy to take the initiative.

The conversation on the way home from the Club brought matters fairly before Huntington's mental vision. One moment it seemed monstrous that his friend of so many years' standing should deliberately announce his intention of entering into an estate from which he himself must perforce be barred, yet while the treachery seemed blackest Huntington found himself acknowledging that it was the proper step for Cosden to take, and admiring that characteristic which saved him from committing his own mistake. Yet, if years before he had only—but herein lies the most extraordinary evidence of Huntington's sentimentality. If the story were told—and it can scarcely be called a story—it would begin and end like Sidney