"Oh!" I said, with a nasty laugh. "And in your opinion that's all?... What about my character?" I demanded suddenly. "Eh?" "I know," he said, with hanging head. "It was rotten of me--but I was 'on'--I really was. And your character's all right, Jeff, with anybody who knows you--they know what a first-rate sort you are----" "Thank you," I said stiffly. "And what about--the partner in my guilt?" "Oh, _her_!" the little animal said, as if _she_ could be left quite out of the question. Then apparently he felt the stirring of returning rectitude. "Well, Jeff, I have apologised.... I don't see what more I can do, except of course to see you all right...." I noted the birth of the attitude I wished to create. I began to appear to let him down by gradual degrees. Exactly how much of it was appearance you see. I abhorred the little wretch. And his renewed apologies, promises, explanations!... He had been "on" he had "simply said" to Mackie; I "should have lost my job soon in any case"; and "he'd see I was all right!" ... That was all his sense of a hideous slander! And his almost rebellious "Well, I have apologised." Good heavens, he would be putting _me_ in the wrong presently!... Every muscle in my body was straining to be at him. But that, I knew, would never, never do. Presently I turned once more to him. All this, after all, was not in the least what I had come to talk to him about. It was only a screen. "Very, well," I said at last. "What's done's done. We'll leave that for the present. Now there's something else I want to say to you. Do you know what it is?" "How should I know?" he said, relieved that the subject was turned. "Think...." When Kitty had come down to see me an hour before she had done so in her hat and coat. She had had her confession to make, and had, I fancied, done me even in her attire the courtesy of hinting humbly that she was entirely at my disposal. But Archie evidently thought that our difference could be arranged in a five minutes' talk sandwiched in between two lessons. He had not even put his hat on. He stood, a small fair figure, red-waistcoated, brass-buttoned, hands in his pockets, leaning against the name-board of the tenants of the various floors of the building, while I, with one hand against the board, hung over him like a huge angel of good and evil, bidding him think. "Think," I said again. He suddenly realised what I meant. I could no more hold his eyes than I could have held those of a chidden dog. They cringed, evaded, even dared short defiances. "Think," I said once more. All at once he said, "I don't know what you mean." "Then," I said, "I shall have to tell you." * * * * * "So," I concluded some minutes later, "do you think you are--doing right--to marry?" * * * * *