_Bartlett_, fiercely.--"You can't imagine it? What's the reason you can't imagine it? Don't be offensive, Cummings!" He stops in his walk and lowers upon his friend. "Why shouldn't I be in love with Miss Wyatt?" _Cummings._--"Oh, nothing. Only you were saying"-- _Bartlett._--"I was saying! Don't tell me what _I_ was saying. Say something yourself." _Cummings._--"Really, Bartlett, you can't expect me to stand this sort of thing. You're preposterous." _Bartlett._--"I know it! But don't blame me. I beg your pardon. Is it because of the circumstances that you can't imagine my being in love with her?" _Cummings._--"Oh, no; I wasn't thinking of the circumstances; but it seemed so out of character for you"-- _Bartlett_, impatiently.--"Oh, love's always out of character, just as it's always out of reason. I admit freely that I'm an ass. And then?" _Cummings._--"Well, then, I don't believe you have any more reason to be in despair than you have to be in love. If she tolerates you, as you say, it _can't_ be because you look like the man who jilted her." _Bartlett._--"Ah! But if she still loves _him_?" _Cummings._--"You don't know that. That strikes me as a craze of jealousy. What makes you think she tolerates you for that reason or no-reason?" _Bartlett._--"What makes me think it? From the very first she interpreted _me_ by what she knew of _him_. She expected me to be this and not to be that; to have one habit and not another; and I could see that every time the fact was different, it was a miserable disappointment to her, a sort of shock. Every little difference between me and that other rascal gave her a start; and whenever I looked up I found her wistful eyes on me as if they were trying to puzzle me out; they used to follow me round the room like the eyes of a family portrait. You wouldn't have liked it yourself, Cummings. For the first three weeks I simply existed on false pretences,--involuntary false pretences, at that. I wanted to explode; I wanted to roar out. If you think I'm at all like that abandoned scoundrel of yours in anything but looks, I'm _not_! But I was bound by everything that was decent, to hold my tongue, and let my soul be rasped out of me in silence and apparent unconsciousness. That was _your_ fault. If you hadn't told me all about the thing, I could have done something outrageous and stopped it. But I was tied hand and foot by what I knew. I had to let it go on." _Cummings._--"I'm very sorry, Bartlett, but"--