dy."

"I suppose it does matter more to them?"

The sunburnt face, puckered with a wry wistfulness, was only comic in
its incongruous coat of grease. But I was under no temptation to smile.
I had to confine my mind pretty closely to the general principle, and
rather studiously to ignore the particular instance, before I could
bring myself to answer the almost infantile inquiry in those honest
eyes.

"My dear fellow, it must!"

Bob looked disappointed but resigned.

"Well, then, I won't press it, though I'm not sure that I agree. You
see, it's not as though there was or ever would be anything between us.
The idea's absurd. We are absolute pals and nothing else. That's what
makes all this such a silly bore. It's so unnecessary. Now she wants me
to go alone, but I don't see the fun of that."

"Does she ask you to go alone?"

"She does. That's the worst of it."

I nodded, and he asked me why.

"She probably thinks it would be the best answer to the tittle-tattlers,
Bob."

That was not a deliberate lie; not until the words were out did it occur
to me that Mrs. Lascelles might now have another object in getting rid
of her swain for the day. But Bob's eyes lighted in a way that made me
feel a deliberate liar.

"By Jove!" he said, "I never thought of that. I don't agree with her,
mind, but if that's her game I'll play it like a book. So long, Duncan!
I'm not one of those chaps who ask a man's advice without the slightest
intention of ever taking it!"

"But I haven't ventured to advise you," I reminded the boy, with a
cowardly eye to the remotest consequences.

"Perhaps not, but you've shown me what's the proper thing to do." And he
went away to do it there and then, like the blameless exception that I
found him to so many human rules.

I had my breakfast upstairs after this, and lay for some considerable
time a prey to feelings which I shall make no further effort to expound;
for this interview had not altered, but only intensified them; and in
any case they must be obvious to those who take the trouble to conceive
themselves in my unenviable position.

And it was my ironic luck to be so circumstanced in a place where I
could have enjoyed life to the hilt! Only to lie with the window open
was to breathe air of a keener purity, a finer temper, a more
exhilarating freshness, than had ever before entered my lungs; and to
get up and look out of the window was to peer into the limpid brilliance
of a gigantic cry