There is a slight pause. Burgoyne would like to answer that he does not remember--would like still more to answer that he does not see what business it can be of Byng's; but, since he is not destitute of common-sense, a second's reflection shows him that he has no good reason for either the lie or the incivility, so he replies, pretty calmly, with his eyes still on his leading article: "I believe Miss Le Marchant said 12 bis." Having obtained the information he wanted, and finding his companion not conversationally disposed, Byng is moving away again, when he is arrested by Jim's voice, adding to the intelligence he has just given the monosyllable: "Why?" "Why what?" asks Byng, returning readily, and laughingly mimicking the intentional obtuseness so lately practised on himself by the other. "Why did you ask?" "I am thinking of paying my respects there this afternoon, and I did not want to ring at the wrong bell." A short silence. Jim's head is partly hidden by his _Galignani_. "Did Miss or Mrs. Le Marchant ask you to call?" Byng laughs. "Both of them are as innocent of it as the babe unborn!" "You asked yourself then?" (in a snubbing voice). Byng nods. "And she said yes?" The plural pronoun has dropped out of sight, but neither of them perceives it. The younger man shakes his sleek head. Jim lays down his paper with an air of decision. "If she did not say 'Yes'--if she said 'No,'" he begins, with an accent of severity, "I fail to understand----" "She did not say 'No,'" interrupts Byng, still half laughing, and yet reddening as well. "She began to say it; but I suppose that I looked so broken-hearted--I am sure I felt it--that she stopped." As Jim makes no rejoinder, he continues by-and-by: "After all, she can but send me away. One is always being sent away" (Jim wishes he could think this truer than he does); "but now and again one is not sent, and those are the times that pay for the others! I'll risk it." There is a hopeful ring in his voice as he ends, and again a pause comes, broken a third time by the younger man. "Come now, Jim"--looking with a straight and disarming good humour into his friend's overcast countenance--"speak up! Do you know of any cause or impediment why I should not?"