At the garden gate I would have left him, but he insisted on my coming up to the door. “I will get you ‘Anna Karénine’; then we can talk about it together――if we’re going to be friends.” He spoke the last words shyly, and I knew that he had found a difficulty in saying them at all. “But I told you I couldn’t read French.” “You can if you like. Don’t try to translate it; read straight ahead.” He came back with two books bound in gray-blue paper, which he handed to me. “It doesn’t matter if the covers get torn or the books come to pieces. My father gets them all rebound in any case. By the way,” once more he blushed, “you needn’t bother about those lines Limpet gave you.” “Why?” “Because I’ll be doing them.” “Oh, rot.” He frowned. “You can do them if you like, but it will be a waste of time.” “I know that.” “I mean, I’m going to do them in any case, whether you do or not.” I laughed. “Couldn’t we each do half?” “I’m going to do them all.” “All right.” He strolled back down the garden path with me. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Waring.” “I know that. I mean your first name.” “Peter.” “Mine is Owen. I’ll come part of the way back with you: I told them inside.” “Shall I call you Owen?” “I don’t care,” he answered quickly, without looking at me. But before we had gone another hundred yards he said: “That isn’t the truth. I told you my name because I wanted you to call me by it.” “All right,” I said, smiling. CHAPTER XXIII That night, for the first time, I felt George’s fascination falter, and it is a fact rather melancholy in its significance that this consciousness came to me in the form of a sense of freedom, of relief. He began to talk to me, just as usual, as soon as he had turned out the light, but I told him brusquely to shut up, that I wanted to go to sleep, and when he tried to begin again I let him see I was in earnest.