t girl drop now, she'd despise me for my faintheartedness.
Sure, and be as disappointed as anything!"

Evan was not in much of a humour to laugh at him. Indeed he foresaw
that an impossible situation would presently develop between Charley
and him unless he said something. With an elaborately casual manner he
began at last:

"I say, Charl, you and I have always played fair with each other."

"Well I should rather fahncy, as Lord Percy said. What's on your
chest, boy? Unload! Unload!"

"It's only fair to tell you that I have become acquainted with the
young lady in question."

Charley stared. "The Deuce you say! You, the scorner of the sex!
Since when?"

"Two nights ago."

"And you never said a word about it. You let me shoot off my mouth all
this time and never----"

"What was there to say?"

"You packed me off to the life class last night so you could--"

"That was for your own good!"

"Come off! Come off! Have I such a trusting eye? On the level why
didn't you tell me before?"

What was Evan to say. He began an explanation that was no explanation.
Charley's sharp eyes bored him through and through.

"By the Lord!" cried the latter at last, "Old Stony-heart has melted!
St. Anthony has fallen for the caloric tresses. Touched where he
lives, by Gad! Brought low and humbled in the dust!"

Evan grinned painfully. "Don't be a fool!" he muttered.

"How does it feel?" asked Charley with mock solicitude, "a dull ache in
the epigastrium or a fluttering sensation in the pericardium; some lay
stress on the characteristic feeling of heaviness behind the occiput."

"You wheeze like a vaudeville performer on small time," growled Evan.

Charley roared. He did not often get his partner on the grill like
this. It was generally the other way about. But in the midst of his
outrageous joshing it suddenly struck the warm-hearted Charley that
under his game grin Evan was suffering very pretty torments. Charley
jumped up and for the briefest of seconds laid his hand on his
partner's shoulder.

"Look here," he said abruptly, "you know what I think of you really, or
if you don't you'll have to take it for granted, for I'll never tell
you. I haven't the words, but only a line of cheap cackle as you say.
Understand, from this time on it's a clear field for you, see? Me for
the Movies, to-night."

Evan was touched, but of course he couldn't show Charley his feelings,
for that matter Charley did not re