"I should say not!" Lemoyne retorted. "Nor you, either. You're not in it now,--or, if you are, you're soon going to be out of it. You would help me through a thing like this, and I'm going to help you." The talk went on. Lemoyne presented the case for a broken engagement. Engagements, as it was well known to human experience, might, if quickly made, be as quickly unmade: no novelty in that. "I had never expected to double up with an engaged man," Lemoyne declared further. "Nothing especially jolly about that--least of all when the poor wretch is held dead against his will." As he went on, he made Cope feel that he had violated an _entente_ of long standing, and had almost brought a trusting friend down from home under false pretenses. But phrases from Amy's letter continued to plague Cope. There was a confiding trust, a tender who-could-say-just-what?... "Well," said Lemoyne, at about two o'clock, "let's put it off till morning. Turn over and go to sleep." But before he fell asleep himself he resolved that he would make the true situation clear next day. He would address that sympathetic mother and that romantic sister in suitably cogent terms; the father, he felt sure, would require no effort and would even welcome his aid with a strong sense of relief. So next day, Lemoyne, deploying his natural graces and his dramatic dexterities, drew away the curtain. He did not go so far as to say that Bertram had been tricked; he did not even go so far as to say that he had been inexpert: he contented himself with saying that his friend had been over-chivalrous and that his fine nature had rather been played upon. The mother took it all with a silent, inexpressive thoughtfulness, though it was felt that she did not want her boy to be unhappy. Rosalys, if she admired Lemoyne a little more, now liked him rather less. Her father, when the declaration reached him by secondary impact, did feel the sense of relief which Lemoyne had anticipated, and came to look upon him as an able, if somewhat fantastic, young fellow. Cope himself, when his father questioned him, said with frank disconsolateness, "I'm miserable!" And, "I wish to heaven I were out of it!" he added. "_Get_ out of it," his father counselled; and when Cope's own feelings were clearly known through the household there was no voice of dissent. "And then buckle down for your degree," the elder added, to finish. "If I only could!" exclaimed Cope, with a wan face,--convinced, youthfully, that the trouble through which he was now striving must last indefinitely. "I should be glad enough to get my mind on it, I'm sure." He walked away to reconstruct a devastated privacy. "Arthur, I'm not quite sure that I thank you," he said, later. "H'm!" replied Lemoyne non-committally. "I hope," he added, more definitely articulate, "that we're going to have a pleasanter life in our new quarters. I'm getting mighty little pleasure--if you'll just understand me--here!" 21