'
'Yes, I understand. Ah, and I used to love her in my way. In
fact, I loved her a good deal at one time; but travel has a
tendency to obliterate early fancies.'
'It has--it has, truly.'
Perhaps the most extraordinary feature in this conversation was
the circumstance that, though each interlocutor had at first his
suspicions of the other's abiding passion awakened by several
little acts, neither would allow himself to see that his friend
might now be speaking deceitfully as well as he.
'Stephen.' resumed Knight, 'now that matters are smooth between
us, I think I must leave you. You won't mind my hurrying off to
my quarters?'
'You'll stay to some sort of supper surely? didn't you come to
dinner!'
'You must really excuse me this once.'
'Then you'll drop in to breakfast to-morrow.'
'I shall be rather pressed for time.'
'An early breakfast, which shall interfere with nothing?'
'I'll come,' said Knight, with as much readiness as it was
possible to graft upon a huge stock of reluctance. 'Yes, early;
eight o'clock say, as we are under the same roof.'
'Any time you like. Eight it shall be.'
And Knight left him. To wear a mask, to dissemble his feelings as
he had in their late miserable conversation, was such torture that
he could support it no longer. It was the first time in Knight's
life that he had ever been so entirely the player of a part. And
the man he had thus deceived was Stephen, who had docilely looked
up to him from youth as a superior of unblemished integrity.
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