ched Jane, to whom she clung for support.

"Don't," screamed Jane. "You'll upset me."

"I must sit down," said Agatha. "I am tired. Let me lean on you until we
get to the chairs."

"Bosh! I can skate for an hour without sitting down," said Jane.
However, she helped Agatha to a chair and left her. Then Smilash, as if
desiring a rest also, sat down close by on the margin of the pond.

"Well," he said, without troubling himself as to whether their
conversation attracted attention or not, "what do you think of me now?"

"Why did you not tell me before, Mr. Trefusis?"

"That is the cream of the joke," he replied, poising his heels on the
ice so that his skates stood vertically at legs' length from him, and
looking at them with a cynical air. "I thought you were in love with me,
and that the truth would be too severe a blow to you. Ha! ha! And, for
the same reason, you generously forbore to tell me that you were no more
in love with me than with the man in the moon. Each played a farce, and
palmed it off on the other as a tragedy."

"There are some things so unmanly, so unkind, and so cruel," said
Agatha, "that I cannot understand any gentleman saying them to a girl.
Please do not speak to me again. Miss Ward! Come to me for a moment.
I--I am not well."

Ward hurried to her side. Smilash, after staring at her for a moment in
astonishment, and in some concern, skimmed away into the crowd. When
he reached the opposite bank he took off his skates and asked Jane, who
strayed intentionally in his direction, to tell Miss Wylie that he
was gone, and would skate no more there. Without adding a word of
explanation he left her and made for his dwelling. As he went down into
the hollow where the road passed through the plantation on the college
side of the chalet he descried a boy, in the uniform of the post office,
sliding along the frozen ditch. A presentiment of evil tidings came upon
him like a darkening of the sky. He quickened his pace.

"Anything for me?" he said.

The boy, who knew him, fumbled in a letter case and produced a buff
envelope. It contained a telegram.

From Jansenius, London.

TO J. Smilash, Chamoounix Villa, Lyvern.

Henrietta dangerously ill after journey wants to see you doctors say
must come at once.

There was a pause. Then he folded the paper methodically and put it in
his pocket, as if quite done with it.

"And so," he said, "perhaps the tragedy is to follow the farce after
all."

He