t your fiancee,
if that's what you mean, to be so uncommonly direct in speech as you
are! You have a way of very much going to the point in everything, but
you won't find it in other people, even throwing women out of the
question."

"What is the use of wrapping things up in mystery? But women delight in
it! The more they can mystify and mislead and perplex you, and leave
their real or their possible meaning doubtful and involved, the greater
the pleasure they have. They will carry on a conversation for hours by
hints, suggestions, ambiguous terms, allusions, phrases that may mean
anything or nothing, and then leave at the end, in obscurity, the whole
matter, which could have been explained and made perfectly clear and
settled on a satisfactory basis in a few short sentences. It's a petty,
abominable trait in their character."

Dick raised his eyebrows considerably.

"She has offended, evidently," he said.

"Offended? She simply tortured me all this evening, either
intentionally or involuntarily. She said too little and too much. And
her manner was worse than her words. I could not make out whether she
was telling me the truth or a series of delicate excuses; she herself
did not calculate on my believing. Everything she said to-night, if
proved false, she might justify to-morrow by saying, 'Oh, well, of
course, I never thought you would take that seriously; I thought you
would understand that was a euphemism to save your feelings, and so on;
you know one does not say to a person's face one is tired of him and
wishes the thing off.' That is what she may say afterwards, or, of
course, what she told me may be the truth. It may be an excuse that
sounds like the truth, or the truth that sounds like an excuse. She
contrived to leave it confoundedly indistinct, and that is what I
complain of."

"You haven't given me any clue yet as to what the conversation was,"
Dick said quietly as we paced down the silent street.

My head seemed reeling with pain and the blood that flowed to it. The
moonlight, and the black shadows it deepened, jumped together before my
eyes.

"The accursed upshot of it was that she won't have anything to do with
our marriage at present," I returned.

"Oh! And what reason did she assign?"

"After considerable hesitation she said her health; but, as I say, she
would not speak out, and such an excuse between us is monstrous!"

"After considerable hesitation she said her health; but, as I say, she