And as always it had to be wormed out of him by degrees, though the task was easier through my fairly accurate knowledge of what was coming. June, he said, had all along been against his taking the job. She had said it was too far away, and that it wasn't good enough for him. "Of course I daresay the salary does seem ridiculous to her. She probably spends three hundred a year on her clothes." I rather doubted that, but I made no interruption. He went on: "Anyhow, that doesn't matter.... The point is that after what she said I promised I'd think it over for a fortnight before deciding.... So now you understand why it was I couldn't give you a definite answer?" Yes, I knew, and had guessed for over an hour, though I didn't tell him that. "The fortnight ended to-night, and I told her I'd made up my mind to accept." "Good." "But then--more than ever--she seemed against the idea." "In other words, she asked you not to go?" "It amounted to that." "What answer did you give?" "I said ... I promised again ... that I'd think it over." That, for some reason or other, made me laugh. "I'm afraid, Terry," I said, "my cross-examination of you is going to be rather stiff.... First of all, you say you _want_ to take the job?" "Yes." "And yet you told her you'd think it over?" "Yes." "Are you going to think it over?" "I--I suppose so." "So you haven't quite made up your mind?" "Well--not absolutely." "So it comes to this--that a woman's persuasion stands in the way of what you want to do?" He shook his head. "No, no. I must take the job. There's no alternative--I quite see that. But--I don't like to disappoint her." "Or yourself?" He said, simply: "We've been very good friends, that's all I can say." Then he began suddenly to talk in sharp jerks of words, as if speaking the thoughts that came to him. "Of course, in _any_ case, it couldn't have gone on for long. She's young now--not twenty-one till next month.... Sooner or later, she's bound to marry somebody--somebody with wealth and position, most likely--and--naturally--it couldn't go on after that...." "What couldn't go on?" "Our--friendship." I knew then, from the curious way he spoke the word "friendship", that he had begun to love her.... IV Somehow I had never thought of that, had never even hoped for it.... And now, with all its train of dazzling possibilities, it was leaping towards me.... Not Helen--but June.... That wanted some realizing.... And with the realization, and the serenity of it, came just a faint flavour of sadness too. I think there is always a sadness in feeling that time _does_ count, and that _grandes passions can_ fade away. Mother and daughter.... What sort of a battle had they been waging, silently, perhaps unconsciously, during the months that had passed? Helen, I know, had been scrupulously platonic, and maybe, after all, it was a just irony that he should come to desire no more than her friendship. But June? Was there more than friendship there?