Since I had flung about him the mantle of my protection, however, I had begun to take a lively interest in him, and before he had gone fifty yards I made up my mind and hurried in pursuit. He looked round at the sound of my footsteps and waited, but without smiling. I had an idea he had passed me deliberately in the porch, and now he received me coldly enough. As we walked along together he made no attempt to defend himself against the charge that had been brought against him; he did not even refer to it, nor to what had taken place during his subsequent interview with Limpet, from whom, nevertheless, he received next morning a public apology. Though I was simply dying to hear what had happened I couldn’t very well ask, and as we proceeded I had to talk about other things. Then, quite suddenly, some change seemed to take place within him, and he inquired abruptly if I had read any of the writings of Count Tolstoy. I had never even heard of Count Tolstoy, but I was not to remain much longer in ignorance. I like enthusiasm, and I got it now. Gill had just finished “Anna Karénine,” and offered to lend it to me, adding that it was in French. I had been learning French in the way one did in those days, and perhaps does still; that is to say, I had been learning it for six or seven years, and was now obliged to confess I couldn’t read it. “Aren’t you coming out of your way?” he demanded with the queer abruptness that characterized him. “Oh, no.” “Do you live up the Malone way?” “No; I live in the town.” “Then why isn’t it out of your way?” “That is only my fashion of telling you I want to come with you,” I answered meekly. “Pure politeness.” He did not smile. “You haven’t been at school long?” he asked. His manner was the oddest mixture of stiffness and shyness, and sometimes he frowned portentously, while at the slightest thing he blushed. “No,” I answered. “Have you?” “Yes――all my life――ever since I was a kid.” He spoke quickly, one would have imagined impatiently. “Have you? I thought, somehow, you hadn’t.” I don’t know why I should have made this wise remark, nor, apparently, did Gill. “Why?” he asked me at once. I laughed. “You don’t seem to have very many friends.” He coloured, and I realized that my remark had been lacking in tact. “I have as many friends as I want,” he answered shortly. I saw I had touched him on a tender spot. “Does that mean you don’t want any new ones?” I ventured, half-laughing, though I was serious enough. His answer was startling. “Perhaps you think you are doing me a favour by walking home with me?” I did not say anything, but I looked at him with some astonishment. He was so odd that his manner had the effect of divesting me of all the shyness I usually suffered from myself on making a new acquaintance, nor did I even feel angry at his rebuff. “I came with you,” I said at length, “to please myself.” He turned crimson, began to speak, was silent, and then apologized.