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Rh a silver box that stood on the table, but next moment put it back without lighting it.

"I think I had one with my coffee," he remarked.

Charlie laughed.

"There we are again at what we were talking of last night," he said. "What does it matter if you smoke two cigarettes?"

"It matters in that I should have done what I did not intend to do. I believe it matters almost less whether what you intend to do is a good thing or an indifferent one than not to do it when you have intended it. The latter is a failure in character."

Charlie Lindsay sat up in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. His quick, excitable voice, that jumped about from note to note might have led the hearer to expect that alert and youthful face, pleasant and attractive to look at, and vivid but notably unstable. His blue eyes looked quickly here and there, never dwelling long in one place, and his hands had movements as restless as his eyes.

"Well, it would be a failure in character," he said, "if I ever did what I intended. The key of my character is to do something quite different to what I meant. You get most fun that way. I mean, for instance chuck me a cigarette not to smoke. So I enjoy quantities of stolen pleasures, which are the nicest sort."

Edgar put straight with his toe the corner of the rug which Charlie had ruffled when he sat up. That also was characteristic of them both.

"My dear fellow," he said, "pray don't think I condemn you, when I say that I should condemn myself for doing that sort of thing. I am aware there are many different sorts of people in the world."

"You don't really mean that?" interpolated the other.

"Yes, and it seems to you priggish, does it not? Not that I mind. I was saying that there are many different people in the world, and since character is one of the most unchangeable things there is, one must allow them to act in ways in which one would not think of acting oneself. I should never condemn other people, I think, whatever they did."

"You would if it injured you," said Charlie, "or injured someone you were fond of."

"I am speaking in the abstract, about the principle."

Charlie got up.

"Oh, but that's an impossible way of regarding the world,"