We dined in a private room on the first floor, which overlooked the street. Hartover proved a brilliant host. Once or twice, after anecdotes a trifle too highly salted for my white tie and clerical coat, he checked himself with a pretty air of penitence, expressing a mischievous hope I ‘wasn’t shocked.’ Shocked I was not, being no puritan; but somewhat grieved, I must admit, his wit should take so gross a turn. Yet what wonder? The guard-room is hardly mealy-mouthed, I supposed; neither, I could imagine, was French Mademoiselle--in intimacy. To her, by the way, I observed, Hartover made so far no smallest allusion. But he spoke of Braithwaite, asking, with an indifference too studied to carry conviction, if my friendship still continued with the father and daughter, and--‘were they well?’ I answered both questions briefly in the affirmative; and there, to my relief, the subject dropped. Towards the end of dinner his high spirits, which, entertaining though he had been, struck me all along as slightly forced, deserted him, and he became silent and preoccupied. Were we approaching disclosure of the trouble which, as he asserted, brought him here hot-foot, to Cambridge and to me? How gladly would I have made the way of confession easy for him! But I had sense to know I must be passive in the matter. Whatever confidence he gave must be given spontaneously. To question him, however circumspectly, would be to put him off by arousing his sensitive pride. As the waiter brought in coffee and lights, Hartover rose, swung out onto the balcony, and, leaning his elbows on the high iron rail of it, stood gazing down into the street. The June twilight lingered, disputing the feeble glimmer of the street lamps. Roofs, gables, pinnacles and towers showed velvet black against the sweet translucence of an almost colourless sky. Footsteps, voices, a grind of wheels and cloppet, cloppet, of horse-hoofs over the stones; the scream of swifts in the buoyant rush of their evening flight, and the tang of a chapel bell, a single reiterated note. Some five minutes must have elapsed while these varied sounds reached me from without. Then Hartover raised his head, calling imperatively over his shoulder---- ‘Brownlow, Brownlow, where are you? I want you. Come here.’ Evidently he had reached some crisis of purpose or of feeling. I went out into the warm evening air and stood beside him. His head was lowered, and again he gazed down into the street. ‘I am sorry, I am ashamed, Brownlow,’ he said, an odd thickness in his speech, ‘but I am afraid I have come here to-day and disturbed you on false pretences. I am afraid I cannot bring myself to talk to you about this matter after all.’ He paused as asking an answer.