“What a frightful view to take!” murmured Mrs. Green; and, although she was very well acquainted with George Gorham’s physiognomy, she examined him disapprovingly through her glass, as if there must be something compromising about it that had hitherto escaped detection.

“Well, I don’t agree with you at all,” said the host emphatically.

“Nor I,” said Mr. Carter.

“Nor I, Mr. Gorham,” said Mrs. Lawford, so plaintively as to convey the impression that if a woman as ready as she to accept new points of view abandoned him there could be no chance of his being right.

“No, you’re all wrong, my dear fellow,” said Casper Green. “Such ideas may go down among your long- haired artistic and literary friends at the Argonaut Club, but you can’t expect civilized Christians to accept them. Why, man, it’s monstrous—monstrous, by Jove!—to depreciate that noble fellow’s action—a man that we all ought to be proud of, as Miss Newbury says. If we don’t encourage such people, how can we expect them to be willing to risk their lives?” Thereupon the little broker, as a relief to his outraged feelings, emptied his champagne glass at a draught and scowled irascibly. His jesting equanimity was rarely disturbed; consequently, everybody felt the importance of his testimony.

“I’m sorry to be so completely in the minority,” said Gorham, “but that’s the way the matter strikes me. I don’t think you quite catch my point though, Caspar,” he added, glancing at Mr. Green. At a less heated moment the company, with the possible exception of Mrs. Green, might have tacitly agreed that this was extremely probable; but now Miss Newbury, who had hitherto refrained from comment in order to digest the problem thoroughly before speaking, came to the broker’s aid.

“It seems to me, Mr. Gorham,” she said, “that your proposition is a very plain one: you claim simply that John Baker had better not have saved the child if in order to do so it was necessary to lose his own life.”

“Precisely,” exclaimed Mr. Green, in a tone of some contempt.

“Was not Mr. Gorham’s meaning that, though it required very great courage to do what Baker did, a man who stopped to think of his own wife and children would have shown even greater courage in restraining his impulse to save the child?” asked Miss Emily Vincent. She was the youngest of the party, a beautiful girl, of fine presence, with a round face, dark eyes, and brilliant pink-and-white colouring. She had been invited to stay by the Lawfords because George Gorham was attentive to her; or, more properly speaking, George Gorham had been asked because he was attentive to her.

“Thank you, Miss Vincent: you have expressed my meaning perfectly,” said Gorham; and his face gladdened. He was dead in love with her, and this was the first civil word, so to speak, that she had said to him during the visit.

“Do you agree with him?” inquired Miss Newbury, with intellectual sternness.

“And do you agree with Mr. Gorham?” asked Mrs. Lawford, at the same moment, caressingly.

All eyes were turned on Emily Vincent, and she let hers fall confusedly. She felt that she would have given worlds not to have spoken. Why had she spoken?

“I understand what he means; but I don’t believe a man in John Baker’s place could help himself,” she said quietly.

“Of course he couldn’t!” cried Mrs. Lawford. “There, Mr. Gorham, you have lost your champion. What have you to say now?” A murmur of approval went round the table.

“I appreciate my loss, but I fear I have nothing to add to what has been said already,” he replied, with smiling firmness. “Although in a pitiful minority, I shall have to stand or fall by that.”