"You would not have gone, Christopher, no matter who said so." Her directness was dangerous. She was then going to allow herself no illusions of any kind, not even concerning the man she loved, and Christopher became suddenly aware he was very young: that they were all three very young, and had no previous experience to guide them in this difficult pass, but must gain it for themselves, gain it perhaps at greater cost than he could willingly contemplate. "It is no question of me, whatever," he said slowly. "I've been used to you and I understand. I don't know how it would be if I had not known, neither do you, but it's clear, you or Nevil must explain the matter to Geoffry at once." "You can do it." "It's not my place." "You were there." "That was mere chance." She slipped her arm through his in the old way. "Dear Christopher, I love Nevil, and he's awfully good, but you are like my own brother. Please pretend you are really. If I had a brother, he would see Geoffry for me." "But Nevil might not like it." It was a difficult pass, for how could he explain to her it was of Geoffry he was thinking, not of Nevil. His evasion at least raised a little smile. "Nevil! An explanation taken off his hands!" She spread her own abroad in mock amazement. "Tell him yourself, Patricia." "Christopher!" He looked straight ahead, a certain rigidness in the outline of his face betokening a decision at variance with his will. "What am I to tell him?" "What you like." "I shall not tell him the silly thing you said just now, you know." "What thing?" "About not marrying." "It doesn't matter," she said indifferently, "he won't marry me if he thinks I tried to hit him." Christopher closed his mind and reason to so illogical a conclusion, but he disputed the point no more, and it was not till he left her and turned to face instantly the task she had laid upon him, that he realised how overwhelmingly difficult it was. CHAPTER XXV "I suppose no one realised you did not know all about it as you'd known them all so long." Christopher concluded his simple and direct account with these words, and waited vainly for a reply from his hearer, who stood by the window with his back to him. "It's so nearly a thing of the past, too, that it hardly seemed worth mentioning," he went on presently, an uneasy wonder at the silence growing on him. At length Geoffry spoke, in a thick, slow way, like a man groping in darkness. "You mean she did throw that stone deliberately, meaning to hit me?" He had no sight at present for the wider issues that beset them or for Patricia's story: his attention was concentrated on the incident immediately affecting him and he could see it in no light but that of dull horror. "Deliberately tried to do it?" he repeated, turning to Christopher. "There wasn't anything deliberate about it. She just flung the stone at you precisely as you flung one at the rabbit. Sort of blind instinct. She does not know now she really hurt you."