Once, in late boyhood, he had sat for an examination which he felt confident of passing. When the announcement arrived that he failed, he could not believe it, though all the time he knew it to be true. His thoughts ran monotonously: "There must be some mistake; there must be some mistake!" and like a little child in the night, he resolutely shut his eyes to keep out the darkness of the future. The same puerility marked him now. Assuming that Adeline fulfilled her intention, his existence in London promised to be tragically cheerless. But this gave him no immediate concern, because he refused to contemplate the possibility of their intimacy being severed. He had, indeed, ceased to think; somewhere at the back of the brain his thoughts lay in wait for him. For the next two hours (until he left the house) he lived mechanically, as it were, and not by volition, subsisting merely on a previously acquired momentum. He sat in front of her and listened. She began to talk of her uncles Mark and Luke. She described them in detail, told stories of her childhood, even recounted the common incidents of her daily life with them. She dwelt on their kindness of heart, and their affection for herself; and with it all she seemed a little to patronise them, as though she had been accustomed to regard them as her slaves. "They are rather old-fashioned," she said, "unless they have altered. Since I heard from them, I have been wondering what they would think about my going to theatres and so on--with you." "What should they think?" Richard broke in. "There's nothing whatever in that. London isn't a provincial town, or even an American city." "I shall tell them all about you," she went on, "and how kind you were to me when I scarcely knew you at all. You couldn't have been kinder if you'd been my only cousin." "Say 'brother,'" he laughed awkwardly. "No, really, I'm quite serious. I never thanked you properly. Perhaps I seemed to take it all as a matter of course." He wished to heaven she would stop. "I'm disgusted that you are going," he grumbled, putting his hands behind his head,--"disgusted." "In many ways I am sorry too. But don't you think I am doing the right thing?" "How am I to tell?" he returned quickly. "All I know is that when you go I shall be left all alone by my little self. You must think of me sometimes in my lonely garret." His tone was light and whimsical, but she would not follow his lead. "I shall often think of you," she said musingly, scanning intently the toe of her shoe. It seemed to him that she desired to say something serious, to justify herself to him, but could not gather courage to frame the words.