Page:Mashi and Other Stories.djvu/230

222 cheque without a word, and then I said: "Now tell me who she is. You need not look on me as a possible rival, for I swear I will not write poems to her; and even if I do I will not send them to her brother, but to you!"

"Don't be absurd," said Nabin; "I have not kept back her name because I feared your rivalry! The fact is, she was very much perturbed at taking this unusual step, and had asked me not to talk about the matter to my friends. But it no longer matters, now that everything has been satisfactorily settled. She lives at No. 19, the house next to yours."

If my heart had been an iron boiler it would have burst. "So she has no objection to remarriage?" I simply asked.

"Not at the present moment," replied Nabin with a smile.

"And was it the poems alone which wrought the magic change?"

"Well, my poems were not so bad, you know," said Nabin, "were they?"

I swore mentally.

But at whom was I to swear? At him? At myself? At Providence? All the same, I swore.