efforts grimly. He ate little at dinner, showed no desire to smoke,
and played billiards so badly that Wratislaw, an execrable player, won
the first and last game of his life. The victor took him out of doors
thereafter to walk on the moonlit, fragrant lawn.

"You are taking things to heart," said he.

"And I'm blessed if I can understand you. To me it's sheer mania."

"And to me it's the last link in a chain. I have suspected myself for
long, now I know myself and-ugh! the knowledge is a hideous thing."

Wratislaw stood regarding his companion seriously. "I wonder what will
happen to you, Lewie. Life is serious enough without inventing a
crotchety virtue to make it miserable."

"Can't you understand me, Tommy? It isn't that I'm a cad, it's that I
am a coward. I couldn't be a cad supposing I tried. These things are a
matter chiefly of blood and bone, and I am not made that way. But God
help me! I am a coward. I can't fight worth twopence. Look at my
performance a fortnight ago. The ordinary gardener's boy can beat me at
making love. I am full of generous impulses and sentiments, but what's
the use of them? Everything grows cold and I am a dumb icicle when it
comes to action. I knew all this before, but I thought I had kept my
bodily courage. I've had a good enough training, and I used to have
pluck."

"But you don't mean to tell me that it was funk that kept you out of the
pool to-day?" cried the impatient Wratislaw.

"How do I know that it wasn't?" came the wretched answer.

Wratislaw turned on his heel and made to go back.

"You're an infernal idiot, Lewie, and an infernal child. Thank heaven!
your friends know you better than you know yourself."

The next morning it was a different man who came down to breakfast. He
had lost his haggard air, and seemed to have forgotten the night's
episode.

"Was I very rude to everybody last night?" he asked. "I have a vague
recollection of playing the fool."

"You were particularly rude about yourself," said Wratislaw.

The young man laughed. "It's a way I have sometimes. It's an awkward
thing when a man's foes are of his own household."

The others seemed to see a catch in his mirth, a ring as of something
hollow. He opened some letters, and looked up from one with a twitching
face and a curious droop of the eyelids. "Miss Wishart is all right,"
he said. "My aunt says that she is none the worse, but that Stocks has
caught a tremendous cold. An unromantic ending!"