o had not
forgotten Siward: Howard Quarrier and Beverly Plank; and one other, a
third, who could not yet forget him if she would--but, as yet, she had
not tried very desperately.

The day that Siward left New York to visit everybody's friend, Mr.
Mulqueen, in the country, Plank called on him for the second time in his
life, and was presently received in the south drawing-room, the library
being limited to an informality and intimacy not for Mr. Plank.

Siward, still lame, and using unskilfully two shiny new crutches, came
down the stairs and stumped into the drawing-room, which, in spite of
the sombre, clustering curtains, was brightly illuminated by the winter
sunshine reflected from the snow in the street. Plank was shocked at the
change in him--at the ghost of a voice, listlessly formal; at the thin,
nerveless hand offered; startled, so that he forgot his shyness, and
retained the bony hand tightly in his, and instinctively laid his other
great cushion-like paw over it, holding it imprisoned, unable to speak,
unconscious, in the impulse of the moment, of the liberty he permitted
himself, and which he had never dreamed of taking with such a man as
Siward.

The effect on Siward was composite; his tired voice ceased; surprise,
inability to understand tinged with instinctive displeasure, were
succeeded by humourous curiosity; and, very slowly it became plain to
him that this beefy young man liked him, was naively concerned about
him, felt friendly toward him, and was showing it as spontaneously as a
child. Because he now understood something of how it is with a man who
is in the process of being forgotten, his perceptions were perhaps the
finer in these days, and the direct unconsciousness of Plank touched him
more heavily than the pair of heavy hands enclosing his.

"I thought I'd come," began Plank, growing redder and redder as he began
to realise the enormity of familiarity committed only on the warrant of
impulse. "You don't look well."

"It was good of you to think of me," said Siward. "Come up to the
library, if you've a few minutes to spare an invalid. Please go first;
I'm a trifle lame yet."

"I--I am sorry," muttered Plank, "very, very sorry."

At first, in the library, Plank was awkward and silent, finding nothing
to say, and nowhere to dispose of his hands, until Siward gave him
a cigar to occupy his fingers. Even then he continued to sit
uncomfortably, his bulk balanced on a rickety, spindle-legged ch