tell if you tell me."

"You won't if I don't."

"Now you are becoming merely trivial. You are ceasing even to be
provoking." Miss Macroyd, in token of her displeasure, laughed no
longer.

"Am I?" he questioned; thoughtfully. "Well, then, I am tempted to act
upon impulse."

"Oh, do act upon impulse for once," she urged. "I'm sure you'll enjoy
it."

"Do you mean that I'm never impulsive?"

"I don't think you look it."

"If you had seen me an hour ago you would have said I was very
impulsive. I think I may have exhausted myself in that direction,
however. I feel the impulse failing me now."

XI.

His impulse really had failed him. It had been to tell Miss Macroyd
about his adventure and frankly trust her with it. He had liked her at
several former meetings rather increasingly, because she had seemed open
and honest beyond the most of women, but her piggish behavior at the
station had been rather too open and honest, and the sense of this now
opportunely intervened between him and the folly he was about to commit.
Besides, he had no right to give Miss Shirley's part in his adventure
away, and, since the affair was more vitally hers than his, to take it
at all out of her hands. The early-falling dusk had favored an unnoticed
advent for them, and there were other chances that had helped keep
unknown their arrival together at Mrs. Westangle's in that squalid
carryall, such as Miss Shirley's having managed instantly to slip
indoors before the man came out for Verrian's suit-case, and of her
having got to her own appointed place long before there was any descent
of the company to the afternoon tea.

It was not for him now to undo all that and begin the laughing at the
affair, which she had pathetically intimated that she would rather some
one else should begin. He recoiled from his imprudence with a shock, but
he had the pleasure of having mystified Miss Macroyd. He felt dismissal
in the roving eye which she cast from him round the room, and he
willingly let another young man replace him at her side.

Yet he was not altogether satisfied. A certain meaner self that there
was in him was not pleased with his relegation even merely in his own
consciousness to the championship of a girl who was going to make her
living in a sort of menial way. It had better be owned for him that, in
his visions of literary glory, he had figured in social triumphs which,
though vague, were resplendent with the glitter of smart cir