But I can't. I'm sorry."

"Absolutely O.K. Faults on both sides, no doubt."

"Because I am fond of you, Mr.--no, I think I must call you Bertie. May
I?"

"Oh, rather."

"Because we are real friends."

"Quite."

"I do like you, Bertie. And if things were different--I wonder----"

"Eh?"

"After all, we are real friends.... We have this common memory.... You
have a right to know.... I don't want you to think----Life is such a
muddle, isn't it?"

To many men, no doubt, these broken utterances would have appeared mere
drooling and would have been dismissed as such. But the Woosters are
quicker-witted than the ordinary and can read between the lines. I
suddenly divined what it was that she was trying to get off the chest.

"You mean there's someone else?"

She nodded.

"You're in love with some other bloke?"

She nodded.

"Engaged, what?"

This time she shook the pumpkin.

"No, not engaged."

Well, that was something, of course. Nevertheless, from the way she
spoke, it certainly looked as if poor old Gussie might as well scratch
his name off the entry list, and I didn't at all like the prospect of
having to break the bad news to him. I had studied the man closely, and
it was my conviction that this would about be his finish.

Gussie, you see, wasn't like some of my pals--the name of Bingo Little is
one that springs to the lips--who, if turned down by a girl, would simply
say, "Well, bung-oh!" and toddle off quite happily to find another. He
was so manifestly a bird who, having failed to score in the first
chukker, would turn the thing up and spend the rest of his life brooding
over his newts and growing long grey whiskers, like one of those chaps
you read about in novels, who live in the great white house you can just
see over there through the trees and shut themselves off from the world
and have pained faces.

"I'm afraid he doesn't care for me in that way. At least, he has said
nothing. You understand that I am only telling you this because----"

"Oh, rather."

"It's odd that you should have asked me if I believed in love at first
sight." She half closed her eyes. "'Who ever loved that loved not at
first sight?'" she said in a rummy voice that brought back to me--I don't
know why--the picture of my Aunt Agatha, as Boadicea, reciting at that
pageant I was speaking of. "It's a silly little story. I was staying with
some friends in the country, and I had gone for a walk with my dog, and
the poor