. I would wait and see. So we fell back to what we had been
before."

He stopped suddenly. "Is that all?" asked Mackenzie in some surprise.

"It's all at present."

There was a long pause. "It's disappointing, somehow," said Mackenzie.
"I suppose I mustn't ask questions, but there are a lot I'd like to
ask."

"Oh, ask away. When the ice is once broken one can talk. It does one
good to talk sometimes."

"Women talk to each other about their love affairs. Men don't--not the
real ones--except on occasions."

"Well, we'll let this be an occasion, as you have started the subject."
He laughed lightly. "You've got a sort of power, Mackenzie. If any one
had told me yesterday that I should be talking to you to-night about a
thing I haven't mentioned to a soul for five years--except once or twice
to Walter Clinton--I should have stared at them. I'm not generally
supposed to be communicative."

"It's impersonal," said Mackenzie, "like telling things to a priest. I'm
not in the same world as you. Five years, is it? Well, now, what on
earth have you been doing ever since? She's not too young to marry now."

"No. I was at Oxford a year after what I told you of. Then I went for a
year to learn estate management on my uncle's property. When I came home
I thought I would fix it up with my father--he was alive then. He said,
wait a year longer. He was beginning to get ill, and I suppose he didn't
want to face the worry of making arrangements till he got better. But he
never got better, and within a year he died."

"And then you were your own master. That's two years ago, isn't it? And
here you are coming back from a year's trip round the world. You seem to
be pretty slow about things."

"One doesn't become one's own master immediately one succeeds to the
ownership of land. These death duties have altered all that. I shan't be
free for another year. Then I hope you will come to my wedding,
Mackenzie."

"Thanks. Didn't the young lady object to keeping it all hanging on for
so long?"

Jim did not reply for a moment. Then he said a little stiffly, "I wrote
to her from Oxford when I had thought things over. I thought it wasn't
fair to tie her up before I was ready to marry, and she so young."

"And that means that you have never allowed yourself to make love to her
since."

"Yes, it means that."

"And yet you have been in love with her all the time?"

"Yes."

"Well, it shows a greater amount of self-control than most pe