For perhaps half a minute Roberts stood there, the fire from the open grate lighting his face, his big capable hands loose at his sides. He made no motion to leave, nor for a space to speak; characteristically abrupt, he turned, facing his companion directly. "Armstrong," he said, "I can't work up to things delicately and have them seemingly happen by chance. Nature didn't endow me with that ability. I have to come out with a broadside shot or not at all. I'm going to do so now. Why don't you get married? Miss Gleason will be a better rudder immeasurably than I am." Involuntarily Armstrong flushed, slowly the color faded. He said nothing. "I know I'm intruding and offending," went on the other; "you show that, but you said a bit ago I was your friend and the thing is on my mind. Believe this at least: I was never more your friend than when I advise the move now. I repeat: why don't you get married, at once?" "Why? You know why, Darley. It's the old reason--the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. They still hold the fort." "No, not for you--unless you let them. Forgive another broadside. If you get pinched temporarily let a friend be of service. I'm not afraid to trust you. Anyway I chance it. We all have to chance something for happiness. Don't delay any longer, man, don't!" "Don't?" Of a sudden Armstrong glanced up and met the other's look steadily. "Don't?" he repeated. "Why do you say that, please?" A second Roberts met the lifted questioning eyes. "Because I meant it," he said. "Please don't ask me to say more." "But I do ask it," pressed Armstrong, stubbornly. "You meant something particular by that, something I have the right to know." "Won't you consider what I suggested," asked Roberts in a low tone; "merely consider it?" "Perhaps after you tell me what you meant. Why 'don't,' please?" On the cosy room fell silence,--the silence of midnight; the longest silence of that interrupted understanding. For a long while Roberts stood precisely as he was; he started walking, measuring the breadth of the room and back again; something the watcher had never known him to do before, never in the years of acquaintance, no matter what the uncertainty or difficulty confronting. A second time he followed the trail back and forth, until, watching him, the spectator felt at last something like terror of the thing he had deliberately conjured and that now was inevitably coming very near; for at last Roberts had halted, was standing over him.