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 he did any of these things consciously, or by plan; it was instinctive with him to conceal the thought of this presence that hung around him like a ghost; and the instinct made him show an open interest in life and his acquaintances, at the same time that it made it impossible for him to come to terms of intimacy with any friends. He spent an occasional evening with Conroy in his room at Residence, and he listened silently, but with a smile, to the conversation of Conroy's new friends; and he was as nearly as possible unnoticed by them there. He particularly absented himself from the college "socials" in which young women participated; he studied less in the library, and took fewer books to his room at night. For the rest, he usually walked out for an hour before going to bed; and he invariably spent his Saturdays and his Sundays on the country roads or in that network of ravines and river bottoms which holds back the north-eastern suburbs of the city.

It was on one of these night walks—a frozen December night—that Conroy, on his way home from the theatre, saw Don ahead of him sauntering up the line of dark shop-windows towards his boarding-house—and stopped him with an over-eager hail of greeting. Since their separation, Conroy had had a guilty feeling that he had deserted an old friend treasonably; he had explained the incident, in a letter to his mother, as due to Don's inability to pay for anything better than a "beastly uncomfortable" boarding-house room in which it was unhealthful to live; and his mother had tactfully persuaded Don to accept an extra