Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/118

110 you'll see how you feel under it—then you can talk. If I wasn't so infernally fond of her,' he gloomily added, 'I wouldn't mind.'

'Wouldn't mind what?'

'Why, what she has been. What she has done.'

'Oh!' Chilver vaguely ejaculated.

'And I only mind now to the extent of wanting to know.' On which Braddle rose from his seat with a heavy sigh. 'Hang it, I've got to know, you know!' he declared as they walked on together.

 V

learned, however, in the course of time that he had won no victory on this, after all, rather reasonable ground—learned it from Mrs. Damerel herself, who came up to town in the spring and established herself, in the neighbourhood of Kensington Square, in modest but decent quarters, where her late suitor's best friend went to pay her his respects. The great condition had, as each party saw it, been fruitlessly maintained, for neither had, under whatever pressure, found a way to give in. The most remarkable thing of all was that Chilver should so rapidly have become aware of owing his acquaintance with these facts directly to Mrs. Damerel. He had, for that matter, on the occasion of his very first call, an impression strangely new to him—the consciousness that they had already touched each other much more than any contact between them explained. They met in the air of a common knowledge, so that when, for instance, almost immediately, without precautions or approaches, she said of Bertram Braddle: 'He has gone off—heaven knows where!—to find out about me,' he was not in the least struck with the length of the jump. He was instantly sensible, on the contrary, of the greatest pleasure in showing by his reply that he needed no explanation. 'And do you think he'll succeed?' 