"I am glad you told me," was all Adams said, but there was a reserved
strength in his voice which made the explosive violence of the other
sound the merest bravado. As he spoke the light flashed in his face, and
Perry saw that it was the face of an old and a tired man. There was a
shrinking in his eyes as of one who has stumbled unexpectedly upon a
revolting sight.

Of the many and varied emotions which had entered Perry's life, the
cleanest, perhaps, was his loyal regard for Roger Adams. It had begun
with his college days, had strengthened with his manhood, and had
lasted, in spite of the amiable contempt in which he held all
literature, with a constancy which had certainly not belonged to his
affairs with representatives of the opposite sex. Now as he looked at
Adams' haggard face under the electric light, he felt the tugging of a
sympathy so strong that it seemed to hurt him somewhere in his expansive
chest.

"Look here, old chap, come and dine with me at Sherry's," he burst out,
"and I'll telephone Gerty that I've thrown over that beastly dinner."

To offer something to eat to the afflicted was the solitary form in
which consolation appeared to him invested with solidity; and so earnest
was the generous impulse by which he now felt himself to be prompted,
that before Adams could reply to the invitation he had begun already to
run over mentally the courses he was prepared to order. For a colossal,
a consolatory, an unforgettable dinner he was determined that it should
be--such a dinner as he permitted himself only upon the rare occasions
when one of his intimate friends had lost heavily in stocks or been
abandoned by his wife. "Come to Sherry's," he urged again, halting in