Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/128

120 'And do I now know any more what you are? However,' Chilver went on, 'if you imply that I haven't acted with most scrupulous fairness, we shall, my dear fellow, quarrel as much as you please. I pressed you hard for your own interest.'

'Oh, my "interest"!' his companion threw off with another move to some distance; coming back, however, as quickly and before Chilver had time to take this up. 'It's all right—I've nothing to say. Your letter was very clever and very handsome.' Then, 'I'm not "up to" anything,' Braddle added with simplicity.

The simplicity just renewed his interlocutor's mirth. 'In that case why shouldn't we manage?'

'Manage?'

'To make the best, all round, of the situation.'

'I've no difficulty whatever,' said Braddle, 'in doing that. If I'm nervous I'm still much less so than I was before I went away. And as to my having broken off, I feel more and more how impossible it was I should have done anything else.'

'I'm sure of it—so we will manage.'

It was as if this prospect, none the less, was still not clear to Braddle. 'Then as you've so much confidence I can ask you why—if what you said just now of me is true—she shouldn't have paid for me a price that she was going, after all, to find herself ready to pay for you.'

'A price? What price?'

'Why, the one we've been talking about. That of waiving her great condition.' On which, as Chilver was, a moment—though without embarrassment—silent for this explanation, his interlocutor pursued: 'The condition of your waiting'

'Ah,' said Chilver, 'it remained. She didn't waive it.'

Oh, how Braddle looked at him! 'You accepted it?'

Chilver gave a laugh at his friend's stare. 'Why are you so surprised when all my urgency to you was to accept it and when I thought you were going to?' Bertram had flushed, and he was really astonished. 'Hadn't you then known?'