‘Miss Linden’s?—­or the glove girl’s?’

’The glove girl’s.  She sent me home a whole cartload of green ties, and declared I’d ordered them.  I shall never forget that day.  I’ve never been up the Arcade since, and never mean to.’

‘You gave Miss Lindon a wrong impression.’

’I don’t know.  I was always giving her wrong impressions.  Once she said that she knew I was not a marrying man, that I was the sort of chap who never would marry, because she saw it in my face.’

‘Under the circumstances, that was trying.’

‘Bitter hard.’  Percy sighed again.  ’I shouldn’t mind if I wasn’t so gone.  I’m not a fellow who does get gone, but when I do get gone, I get so beastly gone.’

‘I tell you what, Percy,—­have a drink!’

‘I’m a teetotaler,—­you know I am.’

’You talk of your heart being broken, and of your being a teetotaler in the same breath,—­if your heart were really broken you’d throw teetotalism to the winds.’

‘Do you think so,—­why?’

’Because you would,—­men whose hearts are broken always do,—­you’d swallow a magnum at the least.’

Percy groaned.

‘When I drink I’m always ill,—­but I’ll have a try.’

He had a try,—­making a good beginning by emptying at a draught the glass which the waiter had just now filled.  Then he relapsed into melancholy.

‘Tell me, Percy,—­honest Indian!—­do you really love her?’

‘Love her?’ His eyes grew round as saucers.  ’Don’t I tell you that I love her?’

’I know you tell me, but that sort of thing is easy telling.  What does it make you feel like, this love you talk so much about?’

’Feel like?—­Just anyhow,—­and nohow.  You should look inside me, and then you’d know.’

’I see.—­It’s like that, is it?—­Suppose she loved another man, what sort of feeling would you feel towards him?’

‘Does she love another man?’

‘I say, suppose.’

’I dare say she does.  I expect that’s it.—­What an idiot I am not to have thought of that before.’  He sighed,—­and refilled his glass.  ’He’s a lucky chap, whoever he is.  I’d—­I’d like to tell him so.’

‘You’d like to tell him so?’

‘He’s such a jolly lucky chap, you know.’

’Possibly,—­but his jolly good luck is your jolly bad luck.  Would you be willing to resign her to him without a word?’

‘If she loves him.’

‘But you say you love her.’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Well then?’

’You don’t suppose that, because I love her, I shouldn’t like to see her happy?—­I’m not such a beast!—­I’d sooner see her happy than anything else in all the world.’

’I see,—­Even happy with another?—­I’m afraid that my philosophy is not like yours.  If I loved Miss Lindon, and she loved, say, Jones, I’m afraid I shouldn’t feel like that towards Jones at all.’

‘What would you feel like?’