ace flamed that he should be thinking
thus of his friend. What! Elsie Bengough, with whom he had spent weeks
and weeks of afternoons--she, the good chum, on whose help he would have
counted had all the rest of the world failed him--she, whose loyalty to
him would not, he knew, swerve as long as there was breath in her--Elsie
to be even in thought dissected thus! He was an ingrate and a cad....

Had she been there in that moment he would have abased himself before
her.

For ten minutes and more he sat, still gazing into the fire, with that
humiliating red fading slowly from his cheeks. All was still within and
without, save for a tiny musical tinkling that came from his kitchen--the
dripping of water from an imperfectly turned-off tap into the vessel
beneath it. Mechanically he began to beat with his finger to the faintly
heard falling of the drops; the tiny regular movement seemed to hasten
that shameful withdrawal from his face. He grew cool once more; and when
he resumed his meditation he was all unconscious that he took it up again
at the same point....

It was not only her florid superfluity of build that he had approached in
the attitude of criticism; he was conscious also of the wide differences
between her mind and his own. He felt no thankfulness that up to a
certain point their natures had ever run companionably side by side; he
was now full of questions beyond that point. Their intellects diverged;
there was no denying it; and, looking back, he was inclined to doubt
whether there had been any real coincidence. True, he had read his
writings to her and she had appeared to speak comprehendingly and to the
point; but what can a man do who, having assumed that another sees as he
does, is suddenly brought up sharp by something that falsifies and
discredits all that has gone before? He doubted all now.... It did for a
moment occur to him that the man who demands of a friend more than can be
given to him is in danger of losing that friend, but he put the thought
aside.

Again he ceased to think, and again moved his finger to the distant
dripping of the tap....

And now (he resumed by-and-by), if these things were true of Elsie
Bengough, they were also true of the creation of which she was the
prototype--Romilly Bishop. And since he could say of Romilly what for
very shame he could not say of Elsie, he gave his thoughts rein. He did
so in that smiling, fire-lighted room, to the accompaniment of the
faintly heard