“My good fellow,” I interrupted, “it is the woman who swears obedience.”

“And the man practises it.  Ho!  Ho!  Ho!”

His laughter (at this very poor repartee) so resounded that the adventitious cow, in the field some hundred yards away, lifted her tail in the air and scampered away, in terror.

“And as to the stay-strings, to continue your delicate metaphor, you can always cut them when you like.”

“Yes.  And then there’s the devil to pay.  She shows you the ends and makes you believe they’re dripping blood and tears.  Don’t I know ’em?  They’re the same from Cape Horn to Alaska, from Dublin to Rio.”

He bellowed forth his invective.  He had no quarrel with marriage as an institution.  It was most useful and salutary—­apparently because it provided him, Jaffery, with comfortable conditions wherein to exist.  The multitude of harmless, necessary males (like myself) were doomed to it.  But there was a race of Chosen Ones, to which he belonged, whose untamable and omni-concupiscent essence kept them outside the dull conjugal pale.  For such as him, nineteen hundred women at once, scattered within the regions of the seven circumferential seas.  He loved them all.  Woman as woman was the joy of the earth.  It was only the silly spectrum of civilisation that broke Woman up into primary colours—­black, yellow, brunette, blonde—­he damned civilisation.

“To listen to you,” said I, when he paused for breath, “one would think you were a devil of a fellow.”

“I am,” he declared.  “I’m a Universalist.  At any rate in theory, or rather in the conviction of what best suits myself.  I’m one of those men who are born to be free, who’ve got to fill their lungs with air, who must get out into the wilds if they’re to live—­God!  I’d sooner be snowed up on a battlefield than smirk at a damned afternoon tea-party any day in the week!  If I want a woman, I like to take her by her hair and swing her up behind me on the saddle and ride away with her—­”

“Lord!  That’s lovely,” said I.  “How often have you done it?”

“I’ve never done that exactly, you silly ass,” said he.  “But that’s my attitude, my philosophy.  You see how impossible it would be for me to tie myself for life to the stay-strings of one flip of a thing in petticoats.”

“You’re a blessed innocent,” said I.

Adrian sauntering through the French window of my library joined us on the terrace.  Jaffery, forgetful of his attitude, his philosophy, caught him by the shoulders and shook him in pain-dealing exuberance.  Old Adrian was going to be married.  He wished him joy.  Yet it was no use his wishing him joy because he already had it—­it was assured.  That exquisite wonder of a girl.  Adrian was a lucky devil, a pestilentially lucky devil.  He, Jaffery, had fallen in love with her on sight. . . .

“And if I hadn’t told him that Miss Jornicroft was engaged to you,” said I, “he would have taken her by the hair of her head and swung her up behind him on the saddle and ridden away with her.  It’s a little way Jaffery has.”