while the yellow rich, the prismatic scum and bubbles, boil on the

surface." Yes, he had accidentally helped me, and I wished doubly that I
might help him. It was well enough he should feel he must not shirk his

duty, but how much better if he could be led to see that marrying where
he did not love was no duty of his.

I knew what I had to say to him, but lacked the beginning of it; and of
this beginning I was in search as we drove up among the live-oaks of

Udolpho to the little club-house, or hunting lodge, where a negro and his
wife received us, and took the baskets and set about preparing supper. My

beginning sat so heavily upon my attention that I took scant notice of
Udolpho as we walked about its adjacent grounds in the twilight before

supper, and John Mayrant pointed out to me its fine old trees, its placid
stream, and bade me admire the snug character of the hunting lodge,

buried away for bachelors' delights deep in the heart of the pleasant
forest. I heard him indulging in memories and anecdotes of date sittings

after long hunts; but I was myself always on a hunt for my beginning, and
none of his words clearly reached my intelligence until I was aware of

his reciting an excellently pertinent couplet:--
"If you would hold your father's land,

You must wash your throat before your hand--"
and found myself standing by the lodge table, upon which he had set two

glasses, containing, I soon ascertained, gin, vermouth, orange bitters,
and a cherry at the bottom--all which he had very skillfully mingled

himself in the happiest proportions.
"The poetry," he remarked, "is hereditary in my family;" and setting down

the empty glasses we also washed our hands. A moon half-grown looked in
at the window from the filmy darkness, and John, catching sight of it,

paused with the wet soap in his hand and stared out at the dimly visible
trees. "Oh, the times, the times!" he murmured to himself, gazing long;

and then with a sort of start he returned to the present moment, and
rinsed and dried his hands. Presently we were sitting at the table,

pledging each other in well-cooled champagne; and it was not long after
this that not only the negro who waited on us was plainly reveling in

John's remarks, but also the cook, with her bandannaed ebony head poked
round the corner of the kitchen door, was doing her utmost to lose no

word of this entertainment. For John, taking up the young and the old,
the quick and the dead, of masculine Kings Port, proceeded to narrate

their private exploits, until by coffee-time he had unrolled for me the
richest tapestry of gayeties that I remember, and I sat without breath,

tearful and aching, while the two negroes had retired far into the
kitchen to muffle their emotions.

"Tom, oh Tom! you Tom!" called John Mayrant; and after the man had come
from the kitchen: "You may put the punch-bowl and things on the table,

and clear away and go to bed. My Great-uncle Marston Chartain," he con-
tinued to me, "was of eccentric taste, and for the last twenty years of

his life never had anybody to dinner but the undertaker." He paused at
this point to mix the punch, and then resumed: "But for all that, he

appears to have been a lively old gentleman to the end, and left us his
version of a saying which is considered by some people an improvement on

the original, 'Cherchez la femme.' Uncle Marston had it, 'Hunt the other
woman.' Don't go too fast with that punch; it isn't as gentle as it

seems."
But John and his Uncle Marston had between them given me my beginning,

and, as I sat sippmg my punch, I ceased to hear the anecdotes which
followed. I sat sipping and smoking, and was presently aware of the

deepening silence of the night, and of John no longer at the table, but
by the window, looking out into the forest, and muttering once more, "Oh,

the times, the times!"
"It's always a triangle," I began.

He turned round from his window. "Triangle?" He looked at my glass of
punch, and then at me. "Go easy with the Bombo," he repeated.

"Bombo?" I echoed. "You call this Bombo? You don't know how remarkable
that is, but that's because you don't know Aunt Carola, who is very

remarkable, too. Well, never mind her now. Point is, it's always a
triangle."

"I haven't a doubt of it," he replied.
"There you're right. And so was your uncle. He knew. Triangle." Here I

found myself nodding portentously at John, and beating the table with my
finger very solemnly.

He stood by his window seeming to wait for me. And now everything in the
universe grew perfectly clear to me; I rose on mastering tides of

thought, and all problems lay disposed of at my feet, while delicious
strength and calm floated in my brain and being. Nothing was difficult

for me. But I was getting away from the triangle, and there was John
waiting at the window, and I mustn't say too much, mustn't say too much.

My will reached out and caught the triangle and brought it close, and I
saw it all perfectly clear again.

"What are they all," I said, "the old romances? You take Paris and Helen
and Menelaus. What's that? You take Launcelot and Arthur and Guinevere.

You take Paola and Francesca and her husband, what's-his-name, or
Tristram and Iseult and Mark. Two men, one woman. Triangle and trouble.

Other way around you get Tannhauser and Venus and Elizabeth; two women,
one man; more triangle and more trouble. Yes." And I nodded at him again.

The tide of my thought was pulling me hard away from this to other
important world-problems, but my will held, struggling, and I kept to it.

"You wait," I told him. "I know what I mean. Trouble is, so hard to
advise him right."

"Advise who right?" inquired John Mayrant.
It helped me wonderfully. My will gripped my floating thoughts and held

them to it. "Friend of mine in trouble; though why he asks me when I'm
not married--I'd be married now, you know, but afraid of only one wife.

Man doesn't love twice; loves thrice, four, six, lots of times; but they
say only one wife. Ought to be two, anyhow. Much easier for man to marry

then."
"Wouldn't it be rather immoral?" John asked.

"Morality is queer thing. Like kaleidoscope. New patterns all the time.
Abraham and wives--perfectlyrespectable. You take Pharaohs--or kings of

that sort--married own sisters. All right then. Perfectly horrible now,
of course. But you ask men about two wives. They'd say something to be

said for that idea. Only there are the women, you know. They'd never. But
I'm going to tell my friend he's doing wrong. Going to write him

to-night. Where's ink?"
"It won't go to-night," said John. "What are you going to tell him?"

"Going to tell him, since only one wife, wicked not to break his
engagement."

John looked at me very hard, as he stood by the window, leaning on the
sill. But my will was getting all the while a stronger hold, and my

thoughts were less and less inclined to stray to other world-problems;
moreover, below the confusion that still a little reigned in them was the

primal cunning of the old Adam, the native man, quite untroubled and
alert--it saw John's look at me and it prompted my course.

"Yes," I said. "He wants the truth from me. Where's his letter? No harm
reading you without names." And I fumbled in my pocket.

"Letter gone. Never mind. Facts are: friend's asked girl. Girl's said
yes. Now he thinks he's bound by that."

"He thinks right," said John.
"Not a bit of it. You take Tannhauser. Engagement to Venus all a mistake.

Perfectly proper to break it. Much more than proper. Only honorable thing
he could do. I'm going to write it to him. Where's ink?" And I got up.

John came from his window and sat down at the table. His glass was empty,
his cigar gone out, and he looked at me. But I looked round the room for

the ink, noting in my search the big fireplace, simple, wooden,
unornamented, but generous, and the plain plaster walls of the lodge,

whereon hung two or three old prints of gamebirds; and all the while I
saw John out of the corner of my eye, looking at me.