e actual telling.
Don't imagine that I took the slightest pleasure in deceiving you.
It's only my will, not my conscience, that is weakened after influenza.
I simply can't help telling what I've made up, and telling it to the
best of my ability. But I'm thoroughly ashamed all the time."

"Not of your ability, surely?"

"Yes, of that, too," he said, with his sad smile. "I always feel that
I'm not doing justice to my idea."

"You are too stern a critic, believe me."

"It is very kind of you to say that. You are very kind altogether.
Had I known that you were so essentially a man of the world, in the
best sense of that term, I shouldn't have so much dreaded seeing you
just now and having to confess to you. But I'm not going to take
advantage of your urbanity and your easy-going ways. I hope that some
day we may meet somewhere when I haven't had influenza and am a not
wholly undesirable acquaintance. As it is, I refuse to let you
associate with me. I am an older man than you, and so I may without
impertinence warn you against having anything to do with me."

I deprecated this advice, of course; but for a man of weakened will he
showed great firmness.

"You," he said, "in your heart of hearts, don't want to have to walk
and talk continually with a person who might at any moment try to
bamboozle you with some ridiculous tale. And I, for my part, don't
want to degrade myself by trying to bamboozle any one, especially one
whom I have taught to see through me. Let the two talks we have had be
as though they had not been. Let us bow to each other, as last year,
but let that be all. Let us follow in all things the precedent of last
year."

With a smile that was almost gay he turned on his heel, and moved away
with a step that was almost brisk. I was a little disconcerted. But I
was also more than a little glad. The restfulness of silence, the
charm of liberty--these things were not, after all, forfeit. My heart
thanked Laider for that; and throughout the week I loyally seconded him
in the system he had laid down for us. All was as it had been last
year. We did not smile to each other, we merely bowed, when we entered
or left the dining-room or smoking-room, and when we met on the
wide-spread sands or in that shop which had a small and faded but
circulating library.

Once or twice in the course of the week it did occur to me that perhaps
Laider had told the simple truth at our first interview and an
inge