id not know what else to say. Tedham seemed to me to be looking very
well, but I could not notify this fact to him, in the circumstances; he
even looked very handsome; he had aged becomingly, and a clean-shaven
face suited him as well as the full beard he used to wear; but I could
speak of these things as little as of his apparent health. I did not
feel that I ought even to ask him what I could do for him. I did not
want to have anything to do with him, and, besides, I have always
regarded this formula as tantamount to saying that you cannot, or will
not, do anything for the man you employ it upon.

The silence which ensued was awkward, but it was better than anything I
could think of to say, and Tedham himself seemed to feel it so. He said,
presently, "Thank you. I was sure you would not take my coming to you
the wrong way. In fact I had no one else to come to--after I----" Tedham
stopped, and then, "I don't know," he went on, "whether you've kept run
of me; I don't suppose you have; I got out to-day at noon."

I could not say anything to that, either; there were very few openings
for me, it appeared, in the conversation, which remained one-sided as
before.

"I went to the cemetery," he continued. "I wanted to realize that those
who had died were dead, it was all one thing as long as I was in there;
everybody was dead; and then I came on to your house."

The house he meant was a place I had taken for the summer a little out
of town, so that I could run in to business every day, and yet have my
mornings and evenings in the country; the fall had been so mild that we
were still eking out the summer there.

"How did you know where I was staying?" I asked, with a willingness to
make any occasion serve for saying something.

Tedham hesitated. "Well, I stopped at the office in Boston on my way
out, and inquired. I was sure nobody would know me there." He said this
apologetically, as if he had been taking a liberty, and explained: "I
wanted to see you very much, and I was afraid that if I let the day go
by I should miss you somehow."

"Oh, all right," I said.

We had remained standing at the point where I had gone round to meet
him, and it seemed, in the awkward silence that now followed, as if I
were rooted there. I would very willingly have said something leading,
for my own sake, if not for his, but I had nothing in mind but that I
had better keep there, and so I waited for him to speak. I believed he
was beating a