he
circumstances would have done otherwise than smile. If all the world had
known it, Elfride would still have remained the only one who thought her
action a sin. Poor child, she always persisted in thinking so, and was
frightened more than enough.'

'Stephen, do you love her now?'

'Well, I like her; I always shall, you know,' he said evasively, and
with all the strategy love suggested. 'But I have not seen her for so
long that I can hardly be expected to love her. Do you love her still?'

'How shall I answer without being ashamed? What fickle beings we
men are, Stephen! Men may love strongest for a while, but women love
longest. I used to love her--in my way, you know.'

'Yes, I understand. Ah, and I used to love her in my way. In fact,
I loved her a good deal at one time; but travel has a tendency to
obliterate early fancies.'

'It has--it has, truly.'

Perhaps the most extraordinary feature in this conversation was the
circumstance that, though each interlocutor had at first his suspicions
of the other's abiding passion awakened by several little acts, neither
would allow himself to see that his friend might now be speaking
deceitfully as well as he.

'Stephen.' resumed Knight, 'now that matters are smooth between us, I
think I must leave you. You won't mind my hurrying off to my quarters?'

'You'll stay to some sort of supper surely? didn't you come to dinner!'

'You must really excuse me this once.'

'Then you'll drop in to breakfast to-morrow.'

'I shall be rather pressed for time.'

'An early breakfast, which shall interfere with nothing?'

'I'll come,' said Knight, with as much readiness as it was possible to
graft upon a huge stock of reluctance. 'Yes, early; eight o'clock say,
as we are under the same roof.'

'Any time you like. Eight it shall be.'

And Knight left him. To wear a mask, to dissemble his feelings as he
had in their late miserable conversation, was such torture that he could
support it no longer. It was the first time in Knight's life that he
had ever been so entirely the player of a part. And the man he had thus
deceived was Stephen, who had docilely looked up to him from youth as a
superior of unblemished integrity.

He went to bed, and allowed the fever of his excitement to rage
uncontrolled. Stephen--it was only he who was the rival--only Stephen!
There was an anti-climax of absurdity which Knight, wretched and
conscience-stricken as he was, could not help recognizing. St