“She and May were with me this morning, and both were rather scandalised at my friendship with a girl in a café,” he said.
“That’s finished anyhow,” Macfarlane asserted grimly. “You’ll never be asked to stretch your legs under the old man’s mahogany again, and you won’t swagger back from tennis any more with Rosie’s favours in your coat Considering your ambitions, which you confided to me recently, I think you are playing the fool with your prospects.”
“I’ve got to get there on my own,” Matheson answered. “I’ve no prejudice against my wife lending me a helping hand, but I don’t want to depend on her entirely for a leg up.”
“Just so!” Macfarlane observed. “At the same time it is as well not to give her a chance of holding you back.”
Which piece of advice served only as an irritant. The disparagement of one’s friends, or of one’s opinions, forces the sincere believer in either into a sturdy opposition.
It was a matter of extreme gratification to Matheson that he had found Brenda Upton again. Her family history concerned him very little. She was such a good comrade. He had not realised until he rediscovered her how much he stood in need of the friendship she could give him. Friendship with a woman who is sympathetic, and young enough to be attractive as well as companionable, fills the blanks in a man’s life.
He was not in love with Brenda; he realised that perfectly; but he was fond of her. If he retained from his intercourse with her none of the glowing memories he recalled in connexion with Honor, her society afforded him a quiet pleasure that was restful and satisfying. She suggested home to a man who knew no home, and peace to a restless spirit, like the calm of inland waters following a voyage in tempestuous seas. Honor had been a dream, a beautiful inspiration. This other girl possessed a charm of an altogether different quality. Already she was becoming for him a symbol of familiar and essential things.