really trying to acknowledge it by taking the rightness of her
feeling for granted on every other occasion. It had become a sort of
habit at last. And it is never pleasant to break a habit. The man was
deeply troubled. I said: "Really! To go to London!"

He looked dumbly into my eyes. It was pathetic and funny. "And you of
course feel it would be useless," I pursued.

He evidently felt that, though he said nothing. He only went on blinking
at me with a solemn and comical slowness. "Unless it be to carry there
the family's blessing," I went on, indulging my chaffing humour steadily,
in a rather sneaking fashion, for I dared not look at Mrs. Fyne, to my
right. No sound or movement came from that direction. "You think very
naturally that to match mere good, sound reasons, against the passionate
conclusions of love is a waste of intellect bordering on the absurd."

He looked surprised as if I had discovered something very clever. He,
dear man, had thought of nothing at all.

He simply knew that he did not want to go to London on that mission. Mere
masculine delicacy. In a moment he became enthusiastic.

"Yes! Yes! Exactly. A man in love . . . You hear, my dear? Here you
have an independent opinion--"

"Can anything be more hopeless," I insisted to the fascinated little
Fyne, "than to pit reason against love. I must confess however that in
this case when I think of that poor girl's sharp chin I wonder if . . . "

My levity was too much for Mrs. Fyne. Still leaning back in her chair
she exclaimed:

"Mr. Marlow!"

* * * * *

As if mysteriously affected by her indignation the absurd Fyne dog began
to bark in the porch. It might have been at a trespassing bumble-bee
however. That animal was capable of any eccentricity. Fyne got up
quickly and went out to him. I think he was glad to leave us alone to
discuss that matter of his journey to London. A sort of anti-sentimental
journey. He, too, apparently, had confidence in my sagacity. It was
touching, this confidence. It was at any rate more genuine than the
confidence his wife pretended to have in her husband's chess-player, of
three successive holidays. Confidence be hanged! Sagacity--indeed! She
had simply marched in without a shadow of misgiving to make me back her
up. But she had delivered herself into my hands . . . "

Interrupting his narrative Marlow addressed me in his tone between grim
jest and grim earnest:

"Perhaps you didn