me, if only for the very shortest space of time. If you refuse I know I
shall do something rash. To-night and tomorrow night at half-past ten I
will be standing at the south end of Westminster Bridge. The _river_
will be near me if _you_ are not; remember that.

Yours for now and eternity, C.J.P.

To this dread summons Polly at length yielded. She met Christopher, and
they paced together on the embankment in front of St. Thomas's
Hospital. It rained a little, and was so close that they both dripped
with perspiration.

"P'r'aps I was a bit short with you," Polly admitted after listening to
her admirer's remonstrances, uttered in a choking voice. "But I can't
stand being spied after, and spied after I won't be."

"I have told you, Polly, at the very least sixty or seventy times, that
I've never done such a thing, and wouldn't, and couldn't. It never came
into my 'ead."

"Well, then, we won't say no more about it, and don't put me out again,
that's all."

"But there's something else, Polly. You know very well, Polly, what a
lot I think of you, don't you now?"

"Oh, I dessay," she replied with careless indulgence.

"Then why won't you let me see you oftener, and--and that kind of
thing, you know?"

This was vague, but perfectly intelligible to the hearer. She gave an
impatient little laugh.

"Oh, don't be silly! Go on!"

"But it isn't silly. You know what I mean. And you said--"

"There you go, bringing up what I said. Don't worry me. If you can't
talk quiet and friendly we'd better not see each other at all. I
shouldn't wonder if that was best for both of us."

Polly had never been less encouraging. She seemed preoccupied, and
spoke in an idle, inattentive way. Her suggestion that they should
"part friends," though she returned upon it several times, did not
sound as if it were made in earnest, and this was Christopher's one
solace.

"Will you meet me reg'lar once a week," he pleaded, "just for a talk?"

"No, it's too often."

"I know what that means," exclaimed the young man in the bitterness of
his soul. "There's somebody else. Yes, that's it; there's somebody
else."

"Well, and what if there was?" asked Polly, looking far away. "I don't
see as it would be any business of yours."

"Oh, just listen to that!" cried Christopher. "That's how a girl talks
to you when she knows you're ready to jump into the river! It's my
belief that girls haven't much feeling."

The outrageous audacity of this avo