“We won’t speak of that,” I said, “if you don’t mind.  I am not proud of it.”

Catherine scanned me more narrowly.  I knew her better with that look.  “Then tell me about yourself, and do sit down,” she said, drawing a chair near the fire, but sitting on the other side of it herself.  “I needn’t ask you how you are.  I never saw you looking so well.  That comes of going right away and not hurrying back.  I think you were so wise!  But, Duncan, I am sorry to see both sticks still!  Have you seen your man since you came back?”

“I have.”

“Well?”

“I’m afraid there’s no more soldiering for me.”

Catherine seemed more than sorry and disappointed; she looked quite indignant with the eminent specialist who had finally pronounced this opinion.  Was I sure he was the very best man for that kind of thing?  She would have a second opinion, if she were me.  Very well, then, a third and fourth!  If there was one man she pitied from the bottom of her heart, it was the man without a profession or an occupation of some kind.  Catherine looked, however, as though her pity were almost akin to horror.

“I have a trifle, luckily,” I said.  “I must try something else.”

Catherine stared into the fire, as though thinking of something else for me to try.  She seemed full of apprehension on my account.

“Don’t you worry about me,” I went on.  “I came here to talk about somebody else, of course.”

Catherine almost started.

“I’ve told you about Bob,” she said, with a suspicious upward glance from the fire.

“I don’t mean Bob,” said I, “or anything you may think I did for him or you.  I said just now that I didn’t want to speak of it and no more I do.  Yet, as a matter of fact, I do want to speak to you about the lady in that case.”

Catherine’s face betrayed the mixed emotions of relief and fresh alarm.

“You don’t mean to say the creature—?  But it’s impossible.  I heard from Bob only this morning.  He wrote so happily!”

I could not help smiling at the nature and quality of the alarm.

“They have seen nothing more of each other, if that’s what you fear,” said I.  “But what I do want to speak about is this creature, as you call her, and no one else.  She has done nothing to deserve quite so much contempt.  I want you to be just to her, Catherine.”

I was serious.  I may have been ridiculous.  Catherine evidently found me so, for, after gauging me with that wry but humourous look which I knew so well of old, for which I had been waiting this afternoon, she went off into the decorous little fit of laughter in which it had invariably ended.

“Forgive me, Duncan dear!  But you do look so serious, and you are so dreadfully broad!  I never was.  I hope you remember that?  Broad minds and easy principles—­the combination is inevitable.  But, really though, Duncan, is there anything to be said for her?  Was she a possible person, in any sense of the word?”