"Stephen Gower is coming over here to-night," says Roger suddenly.
"To-night? Why didn't you ask him to dinner?" asks Dulce, a note of surprise in her tone.
"I did ask him, but, for some reason I now forget, he could not come. He confessed he was lonely, however, in that big barn of a house, and said he would feel deeply grateful if you would permit him to drop in later on. I said you would; and advised him to drop in by all means, though how people do that has always been a puzzle to me."
"Who is Stephen Gower?" asks Portia, curiously, of no one in particular. She is leaning back in her chair, and is fanning herself languidly.
"He is Roger's Fidus Achates—his second self—his very soul!" says Dicky Browne, enthusiastically. "He is a thing apart. We must, in fact, be careful of him, lest he break. At least so I have been told."
"I thought you knew him, too," says Dulce. "I always believed you and Roger, and this wonderful Stephen Gower, were all at college together."
"You wronged Dicky, albeit unwittingly," says Mr. Dare, taking his cigar from between his lips to give more emphasis to his words. "We at Cambridge were too frivolous for such superior beings as Dicky. It was at Oxford he commenced his honorable career; it was there he indulged in those high hopes of future fame that have been so splendidly realized in his maturer years."
"Don't kick me when I'm down," says Dicky, pathetically. "I couldn't help it—and at least I have had my hopes. That must be always something. It's any amount soothing, do you know, to look back upon your past, and remember what a jolly ass you once were."
"I can't imagine your ever having had hopes of future fame," says Dulce, laughing.
"Well I had, do you know, any amount of 'em. In the early dawn, when I was awake—which, perhaps, wasn't so often as it sounds, except when I was returning from—er—a friend's house. I used to sit up with them, you know, whenever they had scarla"—