“Oh, don’t be silly!  Go on!”

“But it isn’t silly.  You know what I mean.  And you said—­”

“There you go, bringing up what I said.  Don’t worry me.  If you can’t talk quiet and friendly we’d better not see each other at all.  I shouldn’t wonder if that was best for both of us.”

Polly had never been less encouraging.  She seemed preoccupied, and spoke in an idle, inattentive way.  Her suggestion that they should “part friends,” though she returned upon it several times, did not sound as if it were made in earnest, and this was Christopher’s one solace.

“Will you meet me reg’lar once a week,” he pleaded, “just for a talk?”

“No, it’s too often.”

“I know what that means,” exclaimed the young man in the bitterness of his soul.  “There’s somebody else.  Yes, that’s it; there’s somebody else.”

“Well, and what if there was?” asked Polly, looking far away.  “I don’t see as it would be any business of yours.”

“Oh, just listen to that!” cried Christopher.  “That’s how a girl talks to you when she knows you’re ready to jump into the river!  It’s my belief that girls haven’t much feeling.”

The outrageous audacity of this avowal saved the speaker from Polly’s indignation.  She saw that he was terribly driven, and, in spite of herself, once more softened towards him; for Polly had never disliked Mr. Parish; from the very first his ingenuous devotedness excited in her something, however elementary, of reciprocal feeling.  She thought him comely to look upon, and had often reflected upon how pleasant it was to rule a man by her slightest look or word.  To be sure, Christopher’s worldly position was nothing to boast of; but one’ knew him for the steady, respectable young clerk, who is more likely than not to advance by modest increments of salary.  Miss Sparkes would have perceived, had she been capable of intellectual perception, that Christopher answered fairly well to one of her ideals.  Others there were, which tended to draw her from him, but she had never yet deliberately turned her back upon the young man.

So now, instead of answering bitterness with wrath, she spoke more gently than of wont.

“Don’t take on in that way, you’ll only have a headache to-morrow.  I can’t promise to meet you regular, but you can write, and I’ll let you know when I’m ready for a talk.  There now, won’t that do?”

Christopher had to make it do, and presently accepted the conditions with tolerable grace.  Before they parted Polly even assured him that if ever there was anyone else she would deal honestly with him and let him know.  This being as much as to say that he might still hope, Christopher cast away his thoughts of self-destruction, and went home with an appetite for a late supper.

Two months elapsed before anything of moment occurred in the relations thus established.  Then at one of their brief meetings Polly delighted the young man by telling him that he might wait for her outside the theatre on a certain evening of the same week.  Hitherto such awaitings had been forbidden.