My relation with Evie during this time is difficult to define. She never quite put me back again into the place I had occupied before that Saturday when we had heard the nightingale together, but newer preoccupations overlay this relation. Archie now had money (I never knew quite how much) at his command; but he still showed no sign of putting it to the use Miss Angela, if not I, had expected--that of entering into a formal engagement with Evie. Miss Angela found excuses for this out of her own imagination--that his father had only lately died, and so on; but I could have set her right even then. I knew how things were drifting. From the little I remembered of my talk with Mackie, Archie had found in his coming into money quite another opportunity. What might have facilitated his marriage with Evie actually delayed it. He was getting rid of his money in Leicester Square again. So Evie's name was associated with his, and yet there was no plighting between them, and Evie swayed, now happy but with a fear, now despairing, but not hopelessly so. There was no trouble she could have brought openly to me even had she wished, but nevertheless she often turned to me significantly full of silence. She, Kitty and I often walked homewards together through the sweltering streets, and when Evie had left us Kitty would speak her mind freely about Archie Merridew. "He's one of the Jewness Dorey now!" she exclaimed one evening, taking the phrase, I don't doubt, from one of her "better class" novels. "And it's no good saying it's got nothing to do with us! I think _you_ ought to give him a talking-to!" This was in the typewriting-room of the college, within ten minutes of the close of an advertisement-writing evening. "What can I say to him?" I asked. "It's no business of mine." She little knew how much I had made it my business. "Oh, that's just like a man!" she said impatiently, all aglow with the _esprit de sexe_. "The poor child's moping and fretting, and you say it's no business of yours! Of course it's the business of _all_ her friends!" "Of all her women friends, maybe," I answered. "Well, if that's so, why don't you and Miss Angela have a talk about it?" "As if we hadn't--twenty!" she cried. "You and your bright ideas. It isn't fair--it _isn't_ fair to Evie!" "But what is it you hope for?" I asked. She stared. "Why, that he'll marry her, of course!" "Quite so. But I don't mean that. I mean, do you and Miss Angela think you can bring any pressure to bear?" "Yes, I do--young idiot!" she broke out. "He ought to be ashamed of himself!" And I didn't doubt that a certain amount of pressure might be brought to bear. If it was made less trouble for Archie to marry than not to marry, he would probably marry. He had not manhood enough, if it was clearly shown that marriage was expected of him, to hold out. And I knew how those marriages turned out.... I meditated.