Still silent, Helen looked at him thoughtfully, but her gaze gave him no clue. 'Can you imagine why not?' he asked. She reflected, then she said that she couldn't. 'Well,' said Gerald, 'I think it's because I didn't go to meet her at Liverpool; from something she said, I think it's that. But I never dreamed she'd mind, you know. And, really, I ask you, Helen, is it reasonable to expect a man to give up a long-standing engagement and take that dreary journey up to that dreary place--I've never seen the Liverpool docks, but I can imagine them at six o'clock in the morning--is it reasonable, I say, to expect that of any man? It wasn't as if I wasn't to see her the next day.' Again Helen carefully considered. 'I suppose she found the docks very dreary--at six o'clock,' she suggested. 'But surely that's not a reason for wanting me to find them dreary too,' Gerald laughed rather impatiently. 'I'd have had to go up to Liverpool on Thursday and spend the night there; do you realise that?' Helen went on with the theme of the docks: 'I suppose she wouldn't have found them so dreary if you'd been on them; and I suppose she expected you not to find them dreary for the same reason.' Gerald contemplated this lucid statement of the case. 'Has she talked to you about it?' he asked. 'Not a word. Althea is very proud. If you have hurt her it is the last thing that she would talk about.' 'I know she's proud and romantic, and a perfect dear, of course; but do you really think it a ground for complaint? I mean--would you have felt hurt in a similar case?' 'I? No, I don't suppose so; but Althea, I think, is used to a great deal of consideration.' 'But, by Jove, Helen, I'm not inconsiderate!' 'Not considerate, in the way Althea is used to.' 'Ah, that's just it,' said Gerald, as if, now, they had reached the centre of his difficulty; 'and I can't pretend to be, either. I can't pretend to be like Mr. Kane. Imagine that quaint little fellow going up to meet her. You must own it's rather grotesque--rather tasteless, too, I think, under the circumstances.' 'They are very old friends.' 'Well, but after all, he's Althea's rejected suitor.' 'It wasn't as a suitor, it was as a friend he went. The fact that she rejected him doesn't make him any less her friend, or any less solicitous about her.'