“He didn’t talk about her much; never showed me her picture. Well, he wouldn’t. I hadn’t had the slightest warning, not a hint, when I got out of that car under the porte-cochère at The Oaks and saw her standing there in the veranda.” I had paid his tale the tribute of almost breathless attention, and even now when he paused as if he’d come to the end of it, it was a good while before I could find anything to say. At last I asked a question. “Why didn’t Judy write to you?” “She’d torn up my letter in a rage before she’d ever got as far as my name and address at the bottom of it. Oh, naturally enough. Think of the perfectly hellish jolt she must have got just from the sight of those two damned twenty-dollar bills, and the knowledge that I’d gone! “And the thing I’d really done wasn’t very much better. Do you remember what she said just now, about thinking she was too young to be allowed to decide anything for herself? That was the theory I’d gone on. I’d taken the decision out of her hands.” “It was the chivalrous thing to do,” I argued dubiously, but wasn’t very much surprised when he flung the word back at my head. “Oh, chivalry be damned! She deserved to have been taken in on it, all right, and I ought to have known it. Lord, I’d had seven solid days of her. She hadn’t acted like a silly kid out for a lark. I was a coward, that’s what it came to. I was afraid if I told her what my plan was that she’d talk me out of it and I’d cave in and be left looking like a crook. Hell, there are times when a man ought to have courage enough to _be_ a crook! “But I wasn’t at the end of my chivalry yet, even when I saw her there at The Oaks Thursday afternoon, saw her turn white and bolt into the house, and found out she was the girl that Bruce was going to marry. “I saw through the sprained ankle dodge, of course, and decided I wouldn’t play tennis. I was hanging around the hall waiting for a sight of her, when Punch caught me and showed me to my room. I did have a few minutes with her afterward, when the others were out on the courts. “But I was still trying not to look like a crook. I started out by trying to tell her she needn’t be afraid, that I hadn’t known I’d find her here and that I wouldn’t give her away.--Oh, I don’t blame myself so much for that. I was rattled, naturally. But I’d lost my chance for a talk that would get anywhere with her, and it began to look as if I’d never have another. “By the time that first infernal evening was half over (lord, it was only night before last) I was desperate. I went off up-stairs and sat down and wrote her another letter. She’d told me why she hadn’t written me, so I had that much to go on. And of course I knew without any question at all, that, regardless of what happened to me, she ought never to marry Bruce.