ieve she will do me that honour. And I consider it an honour.
Miss Milburn will compare with any English girl I ever met. But I
half expected you to congratulate me. I know she wrote to you this
morning--you were one of the first."

"I shall probably find the letter," said Lorne mechanically, "when I go
home."

He still eyed Hesketh narrowly, as if he had somewhere concealed about
him the explanation of this final bitter circumstance. He had a desire
not to leave him, to stand and parley--to go upstairs to the office
would be to plunge into the gulf. He held back from that and leaned
against the door frame, crossing his arms and looking over into the
market-place for subjects to postpone Hesketh's departure. They talked
of various matters in sight, Hesketh showing the zest of his newly
determined citizenship in every observation--the extension of the
electric tramway, the pulling down of the old Fire Hall. In one
consciousness Lorne made concise and relevant remarks; in another he sat
in a spinning dark world and waited for the crash.

It seemed to come when Hesketh said, preparing to go, "I'll tell Miss
Milburn I saw you. I suppose this change in your political prospects
won't affect your professional plans in any way you'll stick on here, at
the Bar?"

It was the very shock of calamity, and for the instant he could see
nothing in the night of it but one far avenue of escape, a possibility
he had never thought of seriously until that moment. The conception
seemed to form itself on his lips, to be involuntary.

"I don't know. A college friend has been pressing me for some time to
join him in Milwaukee. He offers me plenty of work, and I am thinking
seriously of closing with him."

"Go over to the United States? You can't mean that!"

"Oh yes--it's the next best thing!"

Hesketh's face assumed a gravity, a look of feeling and of remonstrance.
He came a step nearer and put a hand on his companion's arm.

"Come now, Murchison," he said, "I ask you--is this a time to be
thinking of chucking the Empire?"

Lorne moved farther into the passage with an abruptness which left his
interlocutor staring. He stood there for a moment in silence, and then
turned to mount the stair with a reply which a passing dray happily
prevented from reaching Hesketh's ears.

"No, damn you," he said. "It's not!"

I cannot let him finish on that uncontrolled phrase, though it will be
acknowledged that his provocation was great. Nor mus