Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/14

6 love the rain,' he weakly pursued. 'Perhaps, better still, it will snow.'

Brown now had indeed a perceptible expression, and the expression was fear. 'Snow, sir—the end of May?' Without pressing this point he looked at his watch. 'You'll feel better when you've had breakfast.'

'I dare say,' said Dane, whom breakfast struck in fact as a pleasant alternative to opening letters. 'I'll come in immediately.'

'But without waiting?'

'Waiting for what?'

Brown had at last, under his apprehension, his first lapse from logic, which he betrayed by hesitating in the evident hope that his companion would, by a flash of remembrance, relieve him of an invidious duty. But the only flashes now were the good man's own. 'You say you can't forget, sir; but you do forget'

'Is it anything very horrible?' Dane broke in.

Brown hung fire. 'Only the gentleman you told me you had asked'

Dane again took him up; horrible or not, it came back—indeed its mere coming back classed it. 'To breakfast to-day? It was to-day; I see.' It came back, yes, came back; the appointment with the young man—he supposed him young—and whose letter, the letter about—what was it?—had struck him. 'Yes, yes; wait, wait.'

'Perhaps he'll do you good, sir,' Brown suggested.

'Sure to—sure to. All right!' Whatever he might do, he would at least prevent some other doing: that was present to our friend as, on the vibration of the electric bell at the door of the flat, Brown moved away. Two things, in the short interval that followed, were present to Dane: his having utterly forgotten the connection, the whence, whither, and why of his guest; and his continued disposition not to touch—no, not with the finger. Ah; if he might never again touch!