Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/130

122 'Good-bye.' Chilver held a minute the hand he had put out. 'Don't be too long. My secondary effect on you may perhaps be better.'

'Oh, it isn't really you. I mean it's her.'

'Talking about her? Then we'll talk of something else. You'll give me the account'

'Oh, as I told you, there was no account!' Braddle quite artlessly broke in. Chilver laughed out again at this, and his interlocutor went on: 'What's the matter is that, though it's none of my business, I can't resist a brutal curiosity—a kind of suspense.'

'Suspense?' Chilver echoed with good-humoured deprecation.

'Of course I do see you're thoroughly happy.'

'Thoroughly.'

Braddle still waited. 'Then it isn't anything?'

'Anything?'

'To make a row about. I mean what you know.'

'But I don't know.'

'Not yet? She hasn't told you?'

'I haven't asked.'

Braddle wondered. 'But it's six months.'

'It's seven. I've let it pass.'

'Pass?' Braddle repeated with a strange sound.

'So would you in my place.'

'Oh, no, I beg your pardon!' Braddle almost exultantly declared. 'But I give you a year.'

'That's what I've given,' said Chilver, serenely.

His companion had a gasp. 'Given her?'

'I bettered even, in accepting it, the great condition. I allowed her double the time.'

Braddle wondered till he turned almost pale. 'Then it's because you're afraid.'

'To spoil my happiness?'

'Yes—and hers.'