He answered loudly, discordantly, "I don't know what you mean, Katty! Why shouldn't you say anything you like about these people? They are nothing, and less than nothing to me, and I don't suppose they're very much to you." Even as he spoke he had got up out of the easy chair into which he had sunk with such happy content a few minutes before. "I must be going now," he said heavily, "Oliver Tropenell's coming in for a game of tennis at six." She made no effort to keep him, though she longed to say to him: "Oliver Tropenell's been in your house, and in your garden, all afternoon. Both he and Laura would be only too pleased if you stayed on here till dinner-time." But instead of saying that, she got up, and silently accompanied him to the front door. There poor Godfrey did linger regretfully. He felt like a child who has been baulked of some promised treat--not by his own fault, but by the fault of those about him. "Will you be in to-morrow?" he asked abruptly. "I think I might come in a little earlier to-morrow, Katty." "Yes, do come to-morrow! I seem to have a hundred things to say to you. I'm sorry we wasted the little time we had to-day in talking over those tiresome people and their matrimonial affairs." There was also a look of regret in her face, and suddenly he told himself that he might have been mistaken just now, and that she had meant nothing--nothing in the least personal or--or probing, in what she had said. "Look here!" he said awkwardly. "If there's anything you really want to say--you said you had a hundred things to tell me--would you like me to come back for a few minutes? There's no great hurry, you know--I mean about Tropenell and his game." She shook her head, and to his moved surprise, the tears came into her pretty brown eyes. "No, not now. I'm tired, Godfrey. It's rather absurd, but I haven't really got over my journey yet; I think I shall have to take your advice, and stay at home rather more." For a long moment they advanced towards one another as if something outside themselves was drawing them together. Then Godfrey Pavely put out his hand, and grasped hers firmly. It was almost as if he was holding her back--at arm's length. Katty laughed nervously. She shook her hand free of his, opened the door wide, and exclaimed: "Well! Good-bye till to-morrow then. My love to Laura." He nodded, and was gone. She shut the door behind him, and, turning, went slowly upstairs. She felt tired, weak, upset--and, what she did not often feel, restless and unhappy as well. It irritated her--nay, it did more than irritate, it hurt her shrewdly--to think of those three people who were about to spend a pleasant couple of hours together. She could so easily, so safely, have made a fourth at their constant meetings.