the usual
vain promises of secrecy that she meant to marry Adam Johnstone's son as
soon as she should be free. Brook had told her plainly enough that he
would not marry her in any case, but he asked himself whether the world
might not say that he should, and whether in that case it might not
turn out to be a question of honour. He had secretly thought of that
before now, and in the sudden depression of spirits which came upon him
as a reaction he cursed himself a third time for having told Clare
Bowring that he loved her, while such a matter as Lady Fan's divorce was
still hanging over him as a possibility.

Sitting on the wall, he swung his legs angrily, striking his heels
against the stones in his perplexed discontent with the ordering of the
universe. Things looked very black. He wished that he could see Clare
again, and that, somehow, he could talk it all over with her. Then he
almost laughed at the idea. She would tell him that she disliked him--he
was sick of the sound of the word--and that it was his duty to marry
Lady Fan. What could she know of Lady Fan? He could not tell her that
the little lady in the white serge, being rather desperate, had got
herself asked to go with the party for the express purpose of throwing
herself at his head, as the current phrase gracefully expresses it, and
with the distinct intention of divorcing her husband in order to marry
Brook Johnstone. He could not tell Clare that he had made love to Lady
Fan to get rid of her, as another common expression put it, with a
delicacy worthy of modern society. He could not tell her that Lady Fan,
who was clever but indiscreet, had unfolded her scheme to her bosom
friend Mrs. Leo Cairngorm, or that Mrs. Cairngorm, unknown to Lady Fan,
had been a very devoted friend of Brook's, and was still fond of him,
and secretly hated Lady Fan, and had therefore unfolded the whole plan
to Brook before the party had started; or that on that afternoon at
sunset on the Acropolis he had not at all assented to Lady Fan's mad
proposal, as she had represented that he had when they had parted on the
platform at Amalfi; he could not tell Clare any of these things, for he
felt that they were not fit for her to hear. And if she knew none of
them she must judge him out of her ignorance. Brook wished that some
supernatural being with a gift for solving hard problems would suddenly
appear and set things straight.

Instead, he saw the man who brought the letters just ent