“I don't agree with you. I don't believe it. My own experience is that the sweetest and most generous friendships may exist between us, without a thought of anything else. And as to making love, I must beg you to remember that my love has been made once for all. I never dreamt of showing Miss Blood anything but polite attention.” “Then what are you troubled about?” “I am troubled--” Dunham stopped helplessly, and Staniford laughed in a challenging, disagreeable way, so that the former perforce resumed: “I'm troubled about--about her possible misinterpretation.” “Oh! Then in this case of sweet and generous friendship the party of the second part may have construed the sentiment quite differently! Well, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to take the contract off your hands?” “You put it grossly,” said Dunham. “And _you_ put it offensively!” cried the other. “My regard for the young lady is as reverent as yours. You have no right to miscolor my words.” “Staniford, you are too bad,” said Dunham, hurt even more than angered. “If I've come to you in the wrong moment--if you are vexed at anything, I'll go away, and beg your pardon for boring you.” Staniford was touched; he looked cordially into his friend's face. “I _was_ vexed at something, but you never can come to me at the wrong moment, old fellow. I beg _your_ pardon. _I_ see your difficulty plainly enough, and I think you're quite right in proposing to hold up,--for that's what you mean, I take it?” “Yes,” said Dunham, “it is. And I don't know how she will like it. She will be puzzled and grieved by it. I hadn't thought seriously about the matter till this morning, when she didn't come to breakfast. You know I've been in the habit of asking her to walk with me every night after tea; but Saturday evening you were with her, and last night I felt sore about the affairs of the day, and rather dull, and I didn't ask her. I think she noticed it. I think she was hurt.” “You think so?” said Staniford, peculiarly. “I might not have thought so,” continued Dunham, “merely because she did not come to breakfast; but her blushing when she looked across at dinner really made me uneasy.” “Very possibly you're right.” Staniford mused a while before he spoke again. “Well, what do you wish me to do?” “I must hold up, as you say, and of course she will feel the difference. I wish--I wish at least you wouldn't avoid her, Staniford. That's all. Any little attention from you--I know it bores you--would not only break the loneliness, but it would explain that--that my--attentions didn't--ah--hadn't meant anything.” “Oh!” “Yes; that it's common to offer them. And she's a girl of so much force of character that when she sees the affair in its true light--I suppose I'm to blame! Yes, I ought to have told her at the beginning that I was engaged. But you can't force a fact of that sort upon a new acquaintance: it looks silly.” Dunham hung his head in self-reproach. “Well?” asked Staniford.