"But _you_ were his valet!"

Whereupon he would simply shake his head, and she would steam forwards--

"Then who are you?"

Whereupon he would say, as calmly as he could--

"I'm Priam Farll. I'll tell you precisely how it all happened."

Thus the talk might happen. Thus it would happen, immediately he began.
But, as at the Dean's door in Dean's Yard, so now, he could not begin.
He could not utter the necessary words aloud. Spoken aloud, they would
sound ridiculous, incredible, insane--and not even Mrs. Challice could
reasonably be expected to grasp their import, much less believe them.

"_There's been a mistake about the so-called death of Priam Farll._"

"_Yes, a hundred and forty thousand pounds._"

No, he could enunciate neither the one sentence nor the other. There are
some truths so bizarre that they make you feel self-conscious and guilty
before you have begun to state them; you state them apologetically; you
blush; you stammer; you have all the air of one who does not expect
belief; you look a fool; you feel a fool; and you bring disaster on
yourself.

He perceived with the most painful clearness that he could never, never
impart to her the terrific secret, the awful truth. Great as she was,
the truth was greater, and she would never be able to swallow it.

"What time is it?" she asked suddenly.

"Oh, you mustn't think about time," he said, with hasty concern.

_Results of Rain_

When the lunch was completely finished and the grill-room had so far
emptied that it was inhabited by no one except themselves and several
waiters who were trying to force them to depart by means of thought
transference and uneasy, hovering round their table, Priam Farll began
to worry his brains in order to find some sane way of spending the
afternoon in her society. He wanted to keep her, but he did not know how
to keep her. He was quite at a loss. Strange that a man great enough and
brilliant enough to get buried in Westminster Abbey had not sufficient
of the small change of cleverness to retain the company of a Mrs. Alice
Challice! Yet so it was. Happily he was buoyed up by the thought that
she understood.

"I must be moving off home," she said, putting her gloves on slowly; and
sighed.

"Let me see," he stammered. "I think you said Werter Road, Putney?"

"Yes. No. 29."

"Perhaps you'll let me call on you," he ventured.

"Oh, do!" she encouraged him.

Nothing could have been more correct, and nothing mor