to go. He had put no spoke in the Major's wheel yet,
and to do that was his contract with Harry Tristram, as well as his own
strong desire.

"Have you sympathized--or condoled--or triumphed--enough?" she asked;
she was fierce still.

"I don't know that I've had a chance of saying anything much," he
observed with some justice.

"I really don't see what you can have to say. What is there to say?"

"Well, there's just this to say--that I'm jolly glad of it."

She was startled by his blunt sincerity, so startled that she passed the
obvious chance of accusing him of cruelty toward Harry Tristram, and
thought only of how his words touched herself.

"Glad of it! Oh, if you knew how it makes me feel about myself! But you
don't, or you'd never be here now."

"Why shouldn't I be here now?" He spoke slowly, as though he were
himself searching for any sound reason.

"Oh, it's----" The power of explanation failed her. People who will not
see obvious things sometimes hold a very strong position. Janie began to
feel rather helpless. "Do go. I don't want anybody to come and find you
here." She had turned from command to entreaty.

"I'm jolly glad," he resumed, settling himself back in his chair, "that
the business between you and Harry Tristram's all over. It ought never
to have gone so far, you know."

"Are you out of your mind to-day, Bob?"

"And now, what about the Major, Miss Janie?"

She flushed red in indignation, perhaps in guilt too. "How dare you?
You've no business to----"

"I don't know the right way to say things, I dare say," he admitted,
but with an abominable tranquillity. "Still I expect you know what I
mean all the same."

"Do you accuse me of having encouraged Major Duplay?"

"I should say you'd been pretty pleasant to him. But it's not my
business to worry myself about Duplay."

"I wish you always understood as well what isn't your business."

"And it isn't what you have done but what you're going to do that I'm
interested in." He paused several moments and then went on very slowly,
"I tell you what it is. I'm not very proud of myself. So if you happen
to be feeling the same, why that's all right, Miss Janie. The fact is, I
let Harry Tristram put me in a funk, you know. He was a swell, and he's
got a sort of way about him too. But I'm hanged if I'm going to be in a
funk of Duplay." He seemed to ask her approval of the proposed firmness
of his attitude. "I've been a bit of an ass about it all, I