"We've never had the least little word!"

"Has she changed?" asked Uvo Delavoye.

"Not that I know of," replied Berridge; but he looked up as though it
were a new idea; and there was more life in his voice.

"She'd tell you," said Uvo, "if I know her."

"Do people tell each other?" eagerly inquired our friend.

"They certainly ought, and I think Miss Hemming would."

"Ah! it's easy enough for them!" cried the miserable young man. "Women
are not liars and traitors because they happen to change their minds.
Nobody thinks the worse of them for that; it's their privilege, isn't
it? They can break off as many engagements as they like; but if I did
such a thing I should never hold up my head again!"

He buried his hot face in his hands, and Delavoye looked at me for the
first time. It was a sympathetic look enough; and yet there was
something in it, a lift of the eyebrow, a light in the eye, that
reminded me of the one point on which we always differed.

"Better hide your head than spoil her life," said he briskly. "But how
long have you felt like doing either? I used to look on you as an ideal
pair."

"So we were," said poor Berridge, readily. "It's most peculiar!"

I saw a twitch at the corners of Uvo's mouth; but he was not the man for
sly glances over a bowed head.

"How long have you been engaged?" he asked.

"Ever since last September."

"You were here then, if I remember?"

"Yes; it was just after my holiday."

"In fact you've been here all the time?"

"Up to these last few weeks."

Delavoye looked round his room as a cross-examining counsel surveys the
court to mark a point. I felt it about time to intervene on the other
side.

"But you looked perfectly happy," said I, "all the autumn?"

"So I was, God knows!"

"Everything was all right until you went away?"

"Everything."

"Then," said I, "it looks to me like the mere mental effect of
influenza, and nothing else."

But that was not the sense of the glance I could not help shooting at
Delavoye. And my explanation was no comfort to Guy Berridge; he had
thought of it before; but then he had never felt better than the last
few days in the country, yet never had he been in such despair.

"I can't go through with it," he groaned in abject unreserve. "It's
making my life a hell--a living lie. I don't know how to bear it--from
one meeting to the next--I dread them so! Yet I've always a sort of hope
that next time everything will suddenly bec