d, "if you'd mind your own
business."

"It is my business," he persisted--doggedly, as I thought.

"What's your business?" I demanded, with rising rage.

"To beg you not to be a fool," he replied, steadily.

My temper had already gone. My self-control now deserted me as I
stopped abruptly, and turned to him.

"Your business!" I exclaimed, bitterly.

"Yes, Fred, my business," he said, quietly, with a touch of sadness in
his tone.

"Then let me tell you," I exclaimed, forgetting everything but my
resentment, "I don't intend to be told my duty _by you of all people_!"

It was enough. He knew the meaning of those cowardly words. His face
turned suddenly pale, and his eyes dropped, as with a half-groan he
started to walk slowly on.

I would have given worlds to recall the words--worlds to be able to
seize his arm and beg his forgiveness. But my wicked vanity kept me
back, and I let him go on alone. Then I followed. It was the first of
many, many sad, solitary walks for me.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

HOW A DOOR CLOSED BETWEEN MY FRIEND SMITH AND ME.

If any one had told me a month before that I should quarrel with my
friend Smith, I should have laughed at the bare idea. But now the
impossible thing had happened.

That night as I lay awake in my bed I felt that I had not a friend in
the world. I had wounded, in the cruellest way, the only true friend I
ever had, and now I was to suffer for it. The words had come hastily
and thoughtlessly, but they had come; and Jack, I knew, regarded me as a
coward and a brute.

The next day we scarcely spoke a word to one another, and when we did it
was in so constrained a manner that it would have been more comfortable
had we remained silent. We walked to and from the office by separate
ways, and during the mid-day half-hour we lunched for the first time at
different eating-houses.

I longed to explain--to beg his pardon. But he was so stiff and distant
in his manner that I could not venture to approach him. Once I did try,
but he saw me coming and, I fancied, turned on his heel before I got up.

What was I to do? If this was to last, I should be miserable for ever.
Yet how could it end? Would I write him a letter, or would I get some
one to plead my cause for me? Or would I let him see how wretched I
was, and work on his feelings that way? It was all my fault, I knew.
Yet he might have come out a little and made a reconciliation easy.
Surely if he had r