“Do you know, there is something I have long wished to say to you,” he began one night when we were sitting up late in our corner; “I was thinking of it all the time you were playing.”
“Don’t say it, I know all about it,” I replied.
“All right! mum’s the word!”
“No! what is it?” I asked.
“Well, it is this. You remember the story I told you about A and B?”
“I should just think I did! What a stupid story! Lucky that it ended as it did!”
“Yes. I was very near destroying my happiness by my own act. You saved me. But the main thing is that I was always telling lies then, and I’m ashamed of it, and I want to have my say out now.”
“Please don’t! you really mustn’t!”
“Don’t be frightened,” he said, smiling. “I only want to justify myself. When I began then, I meant to argue.”
“It is always a mistake to argue,” I said.
“Yes, I argued wrong. After all my disappointments and mistakes in life, I told myself firmly when I came to the country this year, that love was no more for me, and that all I had to do was to grow old decently. So for a long time, I was unable to clear up my feeling towards you, or to make out where it might lead me. I hoped, and I didn’t hope: at one time I thought you were trifling with me; at another I felt sure of you but could