“It's a rummy thing about school. Generally, if a fellow's good at games--in the cricket team or the footer team and so forth--he can hardly help being fairly popular. But this blighter Foster somehow--nobody seemed very keen on him. Of course, he had a few of his own pals, but most of the chaps rather gave him a miss. It may have been because he was a bit sidey... had rather an edge on him, you know... Personally, the reason I barred him was because he wasn't straight. You didn't notice it if you weren't thrown a goodish bit with him, of course, but he and I were in the same house, and...” Sally managed to control her voice, though it shook a little. “I ought to tell you,” she said, and her tone would have warned him had he been less occupied, “that Mr. Foster is a great friend of mine.” But Ginger was intent on the lighting of his cigarette, a delicate operation with the breeze blowing in through the open window. His head was bent, and he had formed his hands into a protective framework which half hid his face. “If you take my tip,” he mumbled, “you'll drop him. He's a wrong 'un.” He spoke with the absent-minded drawl of preoccupation, and Sally could keep the conflagration under no longer. She was aflame from head to foot. “It may interest you to know,” she said, shooting the words out like bullets from between clenched teeth, “that Gerald Foster is the man I am engaged to marry.” Ginger's head came slowly up from his cupped hands. Amazement was in his eyes, and a sort of horror. The cigarette hung limply from his mouth. He did not speak, but sat looking at her, dazed. Then the match burnt his fingers, and he dropped it with a start. The sharp sting of it seemed to wake him. He blinked. “You're joking,” he said, feebly. There was a note of wistfulness in his voice. “It isn't true?” Sally kicked the leg of her chair irritably. She read insolent disapproval into the words. He was daring to criticize... “Of course it's true...” “But...” A look of hopeless misery came into Ginger's pleasant face. He hesitated. Then, with the air of a man bracing himself to a dreadful, but unavoidable, ordeal, he went on. He spoke gruffly, and his eyes, which had been fixed on Sally's, wandered down to the match on the carpet. It was still glowing, and mechanically he put a foot on it. “Foster's married,” he said shortly. “He was married the day before I left Chicago.” 3 It seemed to Ginger that in the silence which followed, brooding over the room like a living presence, even the noises in the street had ceased, as though what he had said had been a spell cutting Sally and himself off from the outer world. Only the little clock on the mantelpiece ticked--ticked--ticked, like a heart beating fast.