n. Having tried vainly to shake his companion off, he was
obliged to submit to walking along the Embankment with him, side by
side.

He had not found the dinner an entertaining event. Drusilla talked a
great deal, but was uneasy and distraite. Rodney Temple seemed to him "a
queer old cove," while Mrs. Temple made no impression on him at all.
Olivia had urged her inability to leave her father as an excuse for not
coming. Davenant said little beyond giving the information that he was
taking leave of his host and hostess to sleep that night in his old
quarters in Boston and proceed next day to Stoughton, Michigan. This
fact gave him a pretext for saying good night when Ashley did and
leaving the house in his company.

"We're going the same way, aren't we?" he asked, as soon as they were
outside.

"No," Ashley said, promptly; "you're taking the tram, and I shall walk."

"I should like to walk, too, Colonel, if you don't mind."

Since silence raised the most telling objection, Ashley made no reply.
Taking out his cigarette-case, he lit a cigarette, without offering one
to his companion. The discourtesy was significant, but Davenant ignored
it, commenting on the extraordinary mildness of the October night and
giving items of information as to the normal behavior of American autumn
weather. As Ashley expressed no appreciation of these data, the subject
was dropped. There was a long silence before Davenant nerved himself to
begin on the topic he had sought this opportunity to broach.

"You said yesterday, Colonel, that you'd like to pay me back the money
I've advanced to Mr. Guion. I'd just as soon you wouldn't, you know."

Ashley deigned no answer. The tramp went on in silence broken only by
distant voices or a snatch of song from a students' club-house near the
river. Somewhere in the direction of Brookline a locomotive kept up a
puffing like the beating of a pulse.

"I don't need that money," Davenant began again. "There's more where it
came from. I shall be out after it--from to-morrow on."

Ashley's silence was less from rudeness than from self-restraint. All
his nerves were taut with the need to visit his troubles on some one's
head. A soldiering life had not accustomed him to indefinite repression
of his irritable impulses, and now after two or three days of it he was
at the limit of his powers. It was partly because he knew his patience
to be nearly at an end that he wanted to be alone. It was also because
he