Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/126

118 wished to draw him out only to be more sorry for him, hesitating simply because of the desire not to put his proceeding to him otherwise than gracefully. 'Awfully low-minded, as well as idiotic, I dare say you'll think it—but I'm not prepared to allow that it was not quite my own affair.'

'Oh, she knew!' said Chilver, comfortably enough.

'Knew I shouldn't find out anything? Well, I didn't. So she was right.'

Thus they sat for a moment and seemed to smoke at her infallibility. 'Do you mean anything objectionable?' Chilver presently inquired.

'Anything at all. Not a scrap. Not a trace of her passage—not an echo of her name. That, however—that I wouldn't, that I couldn't,' Braddle added, 'you'll have known for yourself.'

'No, I wasn't sure.'

'Then she was.'

'Perhaps,' said Chilver. 'But she didn't tell me.'

His friend hesitated. 'Then what has she told you?'

'She has told me nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'Nothing,' said Henry Chilver, smiling as with the enjoy ment of his companion's surprise. 'But do come and see us,' he pursued as Braddle abruptly rose and stood—now with a gravity that was almost portentous—looking down at him.

'I'm horribly nervous. Excuse me. You make me so,' the younger man declared after a pause.

Chilver, who with this had got up soothingly and still laughingly, laid a reassuring hand upon him. 'Dear old man—take it easy!'

'Thanks about coming to see you,' Braddle went on. 'I must think of it. Give me time.'

'Time? Haven't you had months?'

Braddle turned it over. 'Yes; but not on seeing you this way. I'm abominably nervous, at all events. There have