’Had you not better avoid it, Neville?  You know that I can hear nothing.’

’You can hear, my dear, what Mr. Crisparkle has heard, and heard with approval.’

‘Yes; I can hear so much.’

’Well, it is this.  I am not only unsettled and unhappy myself, but I am conscious of unsettling and interfering with other people.  How do I know that, but for my unfortunate presence, you, and—­and--the rest of that former party, our engaging guardian excepted, might be dining cheerfully in Minor Canon Corner to-morrow?  Indeed it probably would be so.  I can see too well that I am not high in the old lady’s opinion, and it is easy to understand what an irksome clog I must be upon the hospitalities of her orderly house--especially at this time of year—­when I must be kept asunder from this person, and there is such a reason for my not being brought into contact with that person, and an unfavourable reputation has preceded me with such another person; and so on.  I have put this very gently to Mr. Crisparkle, for you know his self-denying ways; but still I have put it.  What I have laid much greater stress upon at the same time is, that I am engaged in a miserable struggle with myself, and that a little change and absence may enable me to come through it the better.  So, the weather being bright and hard, I am going on a walking expedition, and intend taking myself out of everybody’s way (my own included, I hope) to-morrow morning.’

‘When to come back?’

‘In a fortnight.’

‘And going quite alone?’

’I am much better without company, even if there were any one but you to bear me company, my dear Helena.’

‘Mr. Crisparkle entirely agrees, you say?’

’Entirely.  I am not sure but that at first he was inclined to think it rather a moody scheme, and one that might do a brooding mind harm.  But we took a moonlight walk last Monday night, to talk it over at leisure, and I represented the case to him as it really is.  I showed him that I do want to conquer myself, and that, this evening well got over, it is surely better that I should be away from here just now, than here.  I could hardly help meeting certain people walking together here, and that could do no good, and is certainly not the way to forget.  A fortnight hence, that chance will probably be over, for the time; and when it again arises for the last time, why, I can again go away.  Farther, I really do feel hopeful of bracing exercise and wholesome fatigue.  You know that Mr. Crisparkle allows such things their full weight in the preservation of his own sound mind in his own sound body, and that his just spirit is not likely to maintain one set of natural laws for himself and another for me.  He yielded to my view of the matter, when convinced that I was honestly in earnest; and so, with his full consent, I start to-morrow morning.  Early enough to be not only out of the streets, but out of hearing of the bells, when the good people go to church.’