onishment. The room was
littered with books and packing-cases with which he had been busy.

'Come in,' he said, not offering to shake hands.

Robert shut the door, and, picking his way among the books, stood
leaning on the back of the chair Langham pointed out to him. Langham
paused opposite to him, his waving jet-black hair falling forward over
the marble pale face which had been Robert's young ideal of manly
beauty.

The two men were only six years distant in age, but so strong is old
association that Robert's feeling towards his friend had always remained
in many respects the feeling of the undergraduate towards the don. His
sense of it now filled him with a curious awkwardness.

'I know why you are come,' said Langham slowly, after a scrutiny of his
visitor.

'I am here by a mere accident,' said the other, thinking perfect
frankness best. 'My wife was present when her sister received your
letter. Rose gave her leave to tell me. I had gone up to ask after them
all, and came on to you,--of course on my own responsibility entirely!
Rose knows nothing of my coming--nothing of what I have to say.'

He paused, struck against his will by the looks of the man before him.
Whatever he had done during the past twenty-four hours he had clearly
had the grace to suffer in the doing of it.

'You can have nothing to say!' said Langham, leaning against the
chimney piece and facing him with black, darkly-burning eyes. 'You know
me.'

Never had Robert seen him under this aspect. All the despair, all the
bitterness hidden under the languid student's exterior of every day,
had, as it were, risen to the surface. He stood at bay, against his
friend, against himself.

'No!' exclaimed Robert stoutly, 'I do not know you in the sense you
mean. I do not know you as the man who could beguile a girl on to a
confession of love, and then tell her that for you marriage was too
great a burden to be faced!'

Langham started, and then closed his lips in an iron silence. Robert
repented him a little. Langham's strange individuality always impressed
him against his will.

'I did not come simply to reproach you, Langham,' he went on, 'though I
confess to being very hot! I came to try and find out--for myself only,
mind--whether what prevents you from following up what I understand
happened last night is really a matter of feeling, or a matter of
outward circumstance. If, upon reflection, you find that your feeling
for Rose is not what you