“I don’t believe he cared for her,” said Gladys shortly. If there is nothing else to do with a clumsy fact, one can ignore it. “Oh, yes, he did awfully,” said the unconscious Jim. “I never saw a fellow so cut up before about a girl. She must have been a jolly decent-looking girl, too—I’ve seen her photograph.” “Really you’re very rude—you contradicted me flatly,” cried Gladys. “Oh, but he _did_, you know,” said the over-truthful James. “_I_ didn’t think she was so awfully fetching, though,” he added hastily, with the bright hope that jealousy of _him_ might have promoted the frown he saw. Gladys yawned. “You’re very dull to-night,” she said, “doing nothing but talk of the uninteresting love affairs of your uninteresting friends!” Jim flushed angrily; he was conscious that he had not introduced the subject, but he was too loyal to say so. “I’m very sorry, Miss Gladys,” he said; “there’s something I’d much rather talk about.” “And that?” said Gladys, lifting unconscious eyelashes with innocent ease. “I think you know,” he said with the dignified gravity of extreme youth over a compliment. “If you mean me,” said Gladys smiling sweetly, “I think you’re very rude to call me a ‘thing,’ and it’s horrid bad form to talk about a girl, you know.” The rest of the evening passed in a pleasant, dangerous fashion. At parting Jim wore the rose she herself had worn at dinner. It was the pledge of all dear, impossible things to him; it was the usual termination of an evening’s episode to her—a gardener would have accused it of blight. CHAPTER XXII “The truth was felt by instinct here— Process which saves a world of time.” DESPERATION, when it does not rave, becomes a calm; and it was with an almost listless quiet that Cynthia, sitting opposite her brother in his office, told him she was going away. He nodded briefly, and went on writing prescriptions. He had not quite finished his evening’s work. The boy was to deliver them to his patients. The room was bare and light, with the usual rows of medical books, long suggestive chair, and the sturdy boy standing near a forbidding cupboard. Cynthia’s eyes took in the surroundings as if they had been new to her. She had argued bitterly with her brother over having no lamp-shades, and the naked bright skeleton roused in her now a sense of irritation. Would Geoff never be done, and why was he so little interested in her going away? But he had always been a man of one idea, she thought, and what interest he had was buried in his prescriptions. Ten minutes later he sent off the boy with a curt order or two, then he turned and looked at his sister. “Going away, are you?” he said. He might have been drawing out a shy child, or encouraging a nervous patient. Cynthia shrugged her shoulders. “So I told you.” “Have you thought why, or where, or when?”