‘Very well,’ I replied. ‘I, at all events, have gained by your coming, in that I have had the joy of seeing you again. Leave the rest if you think fit. You alone can know what you wish--know what appears to you right under the circumstances. You must use your own judgment.’ ‘Ah! there you have me,’ he returned sharply. ‘I don’t know what I wish. I am uncertain what is right. I distrust my own judgment. In short I’m cornered, Brownlow, miserably, detestably cornered. To speak looks to me, at this moment, like an act of unpardonable treachery. Yet, if I don’t speak, I may be rushed before many days are out, by my own mad anger, into something even worse than treachery. Do you understand?’ In a sense I did understand, by intuition born of affection and sympathy. But, unless I was greatly mistaken in my reading of him, all this was merely preliminary. If I waited, I should understand, or at least hear, the whole. And that it would be well for him I should hear the whole I had--God helping me--no shadow of doubt. Slowly the twilight expired, while the blue of the night sky, opaque, profound, travelled stealthily, almost imperceptibly, downward from the zenith. The joyous scream of the swifts ceased, and the bell tanged irregularly, nearing its finish. As it did so, a little group of gownsmen, gathered upon the pavement immediately below, seized by an irresponsible spirit of frolic--as most young animals are prone to be at dusk--started laughing and skylarking, their black raiment fluttering, batlike, as they skirmished across the greyness of the street. Whether the sudden outcry jarred his already strained nerves, or whether the careless whole-hearted fun and laughter of these men, so little younger than himself, offered too mordant a contrast to his own troubled state, Hartover flung in from the balcony with an oath, hesitated for an instant, then blew out the lights and threw himself into an armchair. ‘No, I’m not strong enough to hold my tongue. Wretched weakling that I am,’ he groaned, ‘I must blab. And concerning a woman too.’ He extended his hand, through the semi-darkness, motioning me to a chair. ‘Sit there, please,’ he said. ‘My God, when it comes to the point how I despise myself, Brownlow! It’s--it’s about her, about Fédore.’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, as calmly as I could, for his tone moved me deeply. And the subject, too! I trembled, penetrated alike by fear and hope of what I should hear next.