him. He just puts his arm round his waist and kind of suggests he
should leave the place. Well, it's like that.'
'But doesn't Kirk kick? He used to like having us around.'
His friend laughed.
'Kick? Kirk? You should see him! He just sits there waiting for you to
go, and, when you do go, shuts the door on you so quick you have to
jump to keep from getting your coat caught in it. I tell you, those two
are about all the company either of them needs. They've got the
Newly-weds licked to a whisper.'
'It's always the best fellows that get it the worse,' said the other
philosophically, 'and it's always the fellows you think are safe too. I
could have bet on Kirk. Six months ago I'd have given you any odds you
wanted that he would never marry.'
'And I wouldn't have taken you. It's always the way.'
The criticisms of the two thirsty men, though prejudiced, were
accurate. Marriage had undeniably wrought changes in Kirk Winfield. It
had blown up, decentralized, and re-arranged his entire scheme of life.
Kirk's was one of those natures that run to extremes. He had been a
whole-hearted bachelor, and he was assuredly a much-married man. For
the first six months Ruth was almost literally his whole world. His
friends, the old brigade of the studio, had dropped away from him in a
body. They had visited the studio once or twice at first, but after
that had mysteriously disappeared. He was too engrossed in his
happiness to speculate on the reasons for this defection: he only knew
that he was glad of it.
Their visits had not been a success.
Conversation had flowed fitfully. Some sixth sense told him that Ruth,
though charming to them all, had not liked them; and he himself was
astonished to find what bull dogs they really were. It was odd how out
of sympathy he felt with them. They seemed so unnecessary: yet what a
large part of his life they had once made up!
Something had come between him and them. What it was he did not know.
Ruth could have told him. She was the angel with the flaming sword who
guarded their paradise. Marriage was causing her to make unexpected
discoveries with regard to herself. Before she had always looked on
herself as a rather unusually reasonable, and certainly not a jealous,
woman. But now she was filled with an active dislike for these quite
harmless young men who came to try and share Kirk with her.
She knew it was utterly illogical. A man must have friends. Life could
not be forever a hermitage of two. She tried to analyse her objection
to these men, and came to the conclusion that it was the fact that they
had known Kirk before she did that caused it.
She made a compromise with herself. Kirk should have friends, but they
must be new ones. In a little while, when this crazy desire to keep
herself and him alone together in a world of their own should have left
her, they would begin to build up a circle. But these men whose
vocabulary included the words 'Do you remember?' must be eliminated one
and all.
Kirk, blissfully unconscious that his future was being arranged for him
and the steering-wheel of his life quietly taken out of his hands,
