e, as yet, that she would let him go--for good,
as he said. No doubt she had tricked and plagued him so often in the past
that the present situation seemed to him nothing more than the repetition
of a familiar experience.

Brenda must have realised that, too; but, no doubt, she shrank from
wounding him mortally in public. The ten years of familiar intercourse
between her and Ronnie were not to be obliterated in a day, not even by
the fury of her passion for Arthur Banks.

"I know," she said. "But you _are_ interrupting, Ronnie. Do go!"

"And leave you here?" He was suddenly encouraged again by her tone. He
looked down at her, now; pleading like a great puppy, beseeching her to
put a stop to this very painful game.

"Surely, Ronnie, you must realise that I--mean it, this time," she said.

"Not that you're going to ... going to Canada," he begged.

"Yes. Yes. Definitely and absolutely finally yes," she said.

"With--him?"

"Yes."

"But, _Brenda_!" The long-drawn appeal of her name showed that the full
bitterness of the truth was coming home to him at last.

"I'm sorry," she said, and the sound of it was in some way painfully
final.

"It isn't because..." he began, but she anticipated his well-known reasons
by saying,--

"It's nothing to do with you or with anything you've done, nothing
whatever. I'm sorry, Ronnie, but it's fate--just fate. Do go, now. I'll
see you again before--before we go."

And still he stood for an instant undecided; and I could see the struggle
that was going on in him, between the influence of Harrow and Oxford and
those of the honest, simple primitive man. He knew that the right,
conventional thing for him to do was to be magnanimous; to admit that he
was the defeated lover, and to say something that would prove how splendid
he could be in the moment of disaster. The traditions of Harrow, Oxford,
and the melodrama united to give him an indication of the proper conduct
of the situation, and against them was ranged nothing more than one feral
impulse to take Banks by the throat and settle his blasphemous assumption
of rivalry off-hand.

But it was, I think, a third influence that decided the struggle for that
time. His glare of wrath at Banks had been followed by one last yearning
look at Brenda, and some sentimental realisation of his loss rose and
choked him, temporarily superseding the powers both of make-believe and
instinct. One lesson he had learnt at Harrow and Oxford so thoro