“My darling, I’m not blaming you.  I’m not such a duffer but that I can understand how you feel.  It’ll be all right.  You’ll come round.  This is like an illness, by Jove!—­that’s what it’s like.  But you’ll get better, dear.  After we’re married—­if you’ll only marry me—­”

“I said I’d do that, Rupert—­I said it yesterday—­if you’d give up—­what I understand you have given up—­”

He was on his guard against admitting this.  “I haven’t given it up.  They’ve made it impossible for me to do it; that’s all.  It’s their action, not mine.”

“It comes to the same thing.  I’m ready to keep my promise.”

“You don’t say it with much enthusiasm.”

“Perhaps I say it with something better.  I think I do.  At the same time I wish—­”

“You wish what?”

“I wish I had attached another condition to it.”

“It mayn’t be too late for that even now.  Let’s have it.”

“If I had thought of it,” she said, with a faint, uncertain smile, “I should have exacted a promise that you and he should be—­friends.”

He spoke sharply.  “Who?  Me?  That’s a good ’un, by Jove!  You may as well understand me, dear, once and for all.  I don’t make friends of cow-punchers of that sort.”

“I do,” she said, coldly, turning again to her note-book.

* * * * *

It was not strange that Ashley should pass the remainder of the day in a state of irritation against what he called “this American way of doing things.”  Neither was it strange that when, after dinner in the evening, Davenant kept close to him as they were leaving Rodney Temple’s house, the act should have struck the Englishman as a bit of odious presumption.  Having tried vainly to shake his companion off, he was obliged to submit to walking along the Embankment with him, side by side.

He had not found the dinner an entertaining event.  Drusilla talked a great deal, but was uneasy and distraite.  Rodney Temple seemed to him “a queer old cove,” while Mrs. Temple made no impression on him at all.  Olivia had urged her inability to leave her father as an excuse for not coming.  Davenant said little beyond giving the information that he was taking leave of his host and hostess to sleep that night in his old quarters in Boston and proceed next day to Stoughton, Michigan.  This fact gave him a pretext for saying good night when Ashley did and leaving the house in his company.

“We’re going the same way, aren’t we?” he asked, as soon as they were outside.

“No,” Ashley said, promptly; “you’re taking the tram, and I shall walk.”

“I should like to walk, too, Colonel, if you don’t mind.”

Since silence raised the most telling objection, Ashley made no reply.  Taking out his cigarette-case, he lit a cigarette, without offering one to his companion.  The discourtesy was significant, but Davenant ignored it, commenting on the extraordinary mildness of the October night and giving items of information as to the normal behavior of American autumn weather.  As Ashley expressed no appreciation of these data, the subject was dropped.  There was a long silence before Davenant nerved himself to begin on the topic he had sought this opportunity to broach.