's no worse
than another. You see, I'm hardened; I've got past caring.'

'At any rate,' I insisted, 'I shan't go on to Biarritz. I'll spend my
holiday here, and we can see each other every day. What time shall we
meet to-morrow?'

'No, no, I can't meet you again. Don't ask me to; you mean it kindly,
I know, but you're mistaken. It's done me good to talk it all out to
you, but I can't meet you again. I've got no heart for friendship,
and--you remind me too keenly of many things.'

'But if I come to the _brasserie_ to-morrow night?'

'Oh, if you do that, you'll oblige me to throw up my employment
there, and hide from you. You must promise not to come again--you must
respect my wishes.'

'You're cruel, you know.'

'Perhaps, perhaps. But I think I'm only reasonable. Anyhow, good-bye.'

He shook my hand hurriedly, and moved off. What could I do? I stood
looking after him till he had vanished in the night, with a miserable
baffled recognition of my helplessness to help him.

A RESPONSIBILITY

It has been an episode like a German sentence, with its predicate at
the end. Trifling incidents occurred at haphazard, as it seemed, and I
never guessed they were by way of making sense. Then, this morning,
somewhat of the suddenest, came the verb and the full stop.

Yesterday I should have said there was nothing to tell; to-day there
is too much. The announcement of his death has caused me to review our
relations, with the result of discovering my own part to have been
that of an accessory before the fact. I did not kill him (though, even
there, I'm not sure I didn't lend a hand), but I might have saved his
life. It is certain that he made me signals of distress--faint, shy,
tentative, but unmistakable--and that I pretended not to understand:
just barely dipped my colours, and kept my course. Oh, if I had
dreamed that his distress was extreme--that he was on the point of
foundering and going down! However, that doesn't exonerate me: I ought
to have turned aside to find out. It was a case of criminal
negligence. That he, poor man, probably never blamed me, only adds to
the burden on my conscience. He had got past blaming people, I dare
say, and doubtless merely lumped me with the rest--with the sum-total
of things that made life unsupportable. Yet, for a moment, when we
first met, his face showed a distinct glimmering of hope; so perhaps
there was a distinct disappointment. He must have had so many
disappointments,