Flossie was in no hurry about making up her mind. If Keith had asked her to give him time, it was only fair that he should give her time too, and since his mind was made up in any case, time could be no object to him. So days and weeks had passed on and she had conveyed to him no hint of her decision.

On that Sunday evening, in the seclusion of her bedroom, Flossie said to herself that she had made one great mistake. Prudence and foresight were all very well in their way, but this time she had blundered through excess of caution. In sticking to the post that made her independent she had broken her strongest line of defence. If only she had had the courage to relinquish it at the crucial moment, she would have stood a very much better chance in her contest with Keith. She could then have appealed to his pity as she had done with such signal success two years ago, when the result of the appeal had been to bring him violently to the point. She was wise enough to know that in contending with a chivalrous man a woman’s strongest defence is her defencelessness. Though she was unable to believe that pure abstract honour was or could be the sole and supreme motive of Keith’s behaviour, she felt that if she could have said to him, “I’ve thrown up a good situation to marry you,” his chivalry would not have held out against that argument.

But Flossie never made mistakes. She was too consummate a diplomatist. Therefore, though appearances were against her, it was only reasonable to suppose that she had not really done so now, and that her original inspiration had been right. It was foresight so subtle, so advanced, that it outstripped the ordinary processes of calculation, and appeared afterwards as the mysterious leading of a profounder power, of the under-soul that presses the innocent intellect into the services of its own elemental instincts. The people who yield most obediently to this compulsion are said to have good luck.

Flossie’s good luck, however, was not yet apparent either to herself or to her fellow-boarders at Tavistock Place. Not that she had enlarged on her trouble to any of them. The whole thing had been too profoundly humiliating for that. To say nothing of being engaged to a man who had shown so very little impatience to marry her, to have taken and furnished a house and be unable to live in it, to have received congratulations and wedding presents which had all proved premature, to know, and feel that everybody else knew, that her bedroom was at this moment lumbered up with a trousseau which, whether she wore it or put it by two years, would make her equally ridiculous, was really a very trying position for any young lady, and to Flossie, whose nature was most delicately sensitive to such considerations, it was torture. But, after all, these things were material and external; and the worst of Flossie’s suffering was in her soul. Before the appearance of Miss Harden, the last two years had passed for Flossie in gorgeous triumphal procession through the boarding-house. She had been the invincible heroine of Mrs. Downey’s for two years, she had dragged its young hero at her chariot wheels for two years, she had filled the heart of Ada Bishop with envy and the hearts of Mr. Soper and Mr. Spinks with jealousy and anguish for two years; and now she had all these people pitying her and looking down on her because she had been so queerly treated; and this was even more intolerable to poor Flossie. She knew perfectly well what every one of them was saying. She knew that Ada Bishop had thanked Goodness she wasn’t in her shoes; that Miss Bramble spoke of her persistently as “that poor young thing”; that Mrs. Downey didn’t know which she pitied most, her or poor Mr. Rickman. He was poor Mr. Rickman, if you please, because he was considered to have entangled himself so inextricably with her. She knew that Miss Roots maintained that it was all her (Flossie’s) own fault for holding Keith to his engagement; that Mr. Partridge had wondered why girls were in such a hurry to get married; and that Mr. Soper said she’d made a great mistake in ever taking up with a young fellow you could depend on with so little certainty. And the burden of it all was that Flossie had made a fool of herself and been made a fool of. So she was very bitter in her little heart against the man who was the cause of it all; and if she did not instantly throw Keith Rickman over, that was because Flossie was not really such a fool as for the moment she had been made to look.

But there was one person of the boarding-house whose opinion was as yet unknown to Flossie or to anybody else; it was doubtful indeed if it was known altogether to himself; for Mr. Spinks conceived that honour bound him to a superb reticence on the subject. He had followed with breathless anxiety every turn in the love affairs of Flossie and his friend. He could not deny that a base and secret exultation had possessed him on the amazing advent of Miss Harden; for love had made him preternaturally keen, and he was visited with mysterious intimations of the truth. He did not encourage these visitings. He had tried hard to persuade himself that he was glad for Flossie’s sake when Miss Harden went away; when, whatever there had been between Rickets and the lady, it had come to nothing; when the wedding day remained fixed, immovably fixed. But he had not been glad at all. On the contrary he had suffered horribly, and had felt the subsequent delay as a cruel prolongation of his agony. In the irony of destiny, shortly before the fatal twenty-fifth, Mr. Spinks had been made partner in his uncle’s business, and was now enjoying an income superior to Rickman’s not only in amount but in security. If anything could have added to his dejection it was that. His one consolation hitherto had been that after all, if Rickman did marry Flossie, as he was not in a position to marry her, it came to the same thing in the long run. Now he saw himself cut off from that source of comfort by a solid four hundred a year with prospects of a rise. He could forego the obviously impossible; but in that rosy dawn of incarnation his dream appeared more than ever desirable. Whenever Mr. Spinks’s imagination encountered the idea of marriage it had tried to look another way. Marriage remote and unattainable left Mr. Spinks’s imagination in comparative peace; but brought within the bounds of possibility its appeal was simply maddening. And now, bringing it nearer still, so near that it was impossible to look another way, there came these disturbing suggestions of a misunderstanding between Rickman and his Beaver. The boarding-house knew nothing but that the wedding was put off because Rickman was in difficulties and could not afford to marry at the moment. Spinks would have accepted this explanation as sufficient if it had not been for the peculiar behaviour of Rickman, and the very mysterious and agitating change in Flossie’s manner. Old Rickets had returned to his awful solitude. He absented himself entirely from the dinner-table. When you met him on the stairs he was incommunicative and gloomy; and whatever you asked him to do he was too busy to do it. His sole attention to poor Flossie was to take her for an occasional airing in the Park on Sunday afternoons. Spinks had come across them there walking sadly side by side. Flossie for propriety’s sake would be making a little conversation as he went by; but Rickman had always the shut mouth and steady eyes of invincible determination.

What was it that Razors was so determined about? To marry Flossie? Or not to marry her? That was the question which agitated poor Spinks from morning till night, or rather from night till morning. The worst of it was that the very nature of his woes compelled him as an honourable person to keep them to himself.

But there was no secret which could be long concealed from the eyes of that clever lady, Miss Roots; and she had contrived in the most delicate manner to convey to the unfortunate youth that he had her sympathy. Spinks, bound by his honour, had used no words in divulging his agony; but their unspoken confidences had gone so far that Miss Roots at last permitted herself to say that it might be as well to find out whether “it was on or off.”

“But,” said the miserable Spinks, “would that be fair to Rickman?”

“I think so,” said the lady, with a smile that would have been sweet had it been rather less astute. “Mind you, I’m not in their secrets; but I believe you really needn’t be afraid of that.”

“Yes. But how in Heaven’s name am I to find out? I can’t ask him, and I can’t ask her.”

“Why can’t you ask them?”

Spinks was unable to say why; but his delicacy shrank from either course as in some subtle way unfair. Besides he distrusted Miss Roots’s counsel, for she had not been nice to Flossie.

“Oh Lord,” said Spinks, “what an orful mess I’m in!” He said it to himself; for he had resolved to talk no longer to Miss Roots.

He could have borne it better had not the terrible preoccupation of Rickman thrown Flossie on his hands. In common decency he had to talk to her at the dinner-table. But it was chivalry (surely) that drew him to her in the drawing-room afterwards. She had to be protected (poor Flossie) from the shrewdness of Miss Roots, the impertinence of Mr. Soper, and the painful sympathy of the other boarders. With the very best and noblest intentions in the world, Mr. Spinks descended nightly into that atmosphere of gloom, and there let loose his imperishable hilarity.

He was quite safe, he knew, as long as their relations could be kept upon a purely hilarious footing; but Flossie’s manner intimated (what it had never intimated before) that she now realized and preferred the serious side of him; and there was no way by which the humorous Spinks was more profoundly flattered than in being taken seriously. Some nights they had the drawing-room to themselves but for the harmless presence of Mr. Partridge dozing in his chair; and then, to see Flossie struggling to keep a polite little smile hovering on a mouth too tiny to support it; to see her give up the effort and suddenly become grave; to see her turn away to hide her gravity with all the precautions another woman takes to conceal her merriment; to see her sitting there, absolutely unmoved by the diverting behaviour of Mr. Partridge in his slumber, was profoundly agitating to Mr. Spinks.

“I’m sure,” said Flossie one night (it was nearly three weeks after the scene with Rickman in the Park), “I’m sure I don’t know why we’re laughing so much. There’s nothing to laugh at that I can see.”

Spinks could have have replied in Byron’s fashion that if he laughed ’twas that he might not weep, but he restrained himself; and all he said was, “I like to see you larf.”

“Well, you can’t say you’ve ever seen me cry.”

“No, I haven’t. I shouldn’t like to see that, Flossie. And I shouldn’t like to be the one that made you.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Flossie put her pocket handkerchief to her little nose, and under the corner of it there peeped the tail-end of a lurking smile.

“No,” said Spinks simply, “I wouldn’t.” He was thinking of Miss Roots. The theory of Rickman’s bad behaviour had never entered his head. “What’s more, I don’t think any nice person would do it.”

“Don’t you?”

“No. Not any really nice person.”

“It’s generally,” said Flossie, sweetly meditative, “the nicest person you know who can make you cry most. Not that I’m crying.”

“No. But I can see that somebody’s been annoying you, and I think I can guess pretty well who it is, too. Nothing would please me more than to ‘ave five minutes’ private conversation with that person.” He was thinking of Miss Harden now.

“You mustn’t dream of it. It wouldn’t do, you know; it really wouldn’t. Look here, promise me you’ll never say a word.”

“Well it’s safe enough to promise. There aren’t many opportunities of meeting.”

“No, that’s the worst of it, there aren’t now. Still, you might meet him any minute on the stairs, or anywhere. And if you go saying things you’ll only make him angry.”

“Oh it’s a him, is it?” (Now he was thinking of Soper.) “I know. Don’t say Soper’s been making himself unpleasant.”

“He’s always unpleasant.”

“Is he? By ’Eaven, if I catch him!”

“Do be quiet. It isn’t Mr. Soper.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No. How could it be? You don’t call Mr. Soper nice, do you?”

Spinks was really quiet for a moment. “I say, Flossie, have you and Rickets been ’aving a bit of a tiff?”

“What do you want to know that for? It’s nothing to you.”

“Well, it isn’t just my curiosity. It’s because I might be able to help you, Floss, if you didn’t mind telling me what it was. I’m not a clever fellow, but there’s no one in this house understands old Razors as well as I do.”

“Then you must be pretty sharp, for I can’t understand him at all. Has he been saying anything to you?”

“Oh no, he wouldn’t say anything. You don’t talk about these things, you know.”

“I thought he might to you.”

“Me? I’m the very last person he’d dream of talking to.”

“I thought you were such friends.”

“So we are. But you see he never talks about you to me, Flossie.”

“Why ever not?”

“That’s why. Because we’re friends. Because he wouldn’t think it fair

“Fair to who?”

“To me, of course.”

“Why shouldn’t it be fair to you?” Her eyes, close-lidded, were fixed upon the floor. As long as she looked at him Spinks held himself well in hand; but the sudden withdrawing of those dangerous weapons threw him off his guard.

“Because he knows I Oh hang it all, that’s what I swore I wouldn’t say.”

“You haven’t said it.”

“No, but I’ve made you see it.”

His handsome face stiffened with horror at his stupidity. To let fall the slightest hint of his feeling was, he felt, the last disloyalty to Rickman. He had a vague idea that he ought instantly to go. But instead of going he sat there, silent, fixing on his own enormity a mental stare so concentrated that it would have drawn Flossie’s attention to it, if she had not seen it all the time.

“If there’s anything to see,” said she, “there’s no reason why I shouldn’t see it.”

“P’raps not. There’s every reason, though, why I should have held my silly tongue.”

“Why, what difference does it make?”

“It doesn’t make any difference to you, of course, and it can’t make any difference really to him; but it’s a downright dishonourable thing to do, and that makes a jolly lot of difference to me. You see, I haven’t any business to go and feel like this.”

“Oh well, you can’t help your feelings, can you?” she said softly. “Anybody may have feelings

“Yes, but a decent chap, you know, wouldn’t let on that he had any at least, not when the girl he he you know what I mean, it’s what I mustn’t say when she and the other fellow weren’t hitting it off very well together.”

“Oh, you think it might make a difference then?”

“No, I don’t not reelly. It’s only the feeling I have about it, don’t you see. It seems somehow so orf’ly mean. Razors wouldn’t have done it if it had been me, you know.”

“But it couldn’t have been you.”

“Of course it couldn’t,” said the miserable Spinks with a weak spurt of anger; “that was only my way of putting it.”

“What are you driving at? What ever did you think I said?”

“Never mind what you said. You’re making me talk about it, and I said I wouldn’t.”

“When did you say that?”

“Ages ago when Rickets first told me you and he

“Oh that? That was so long ago that it doesn’t matter much now.”

“Oh, doesn’t it though, it matters a jolly sight more. You said” (there was bitterness in his tone), “you said it couldn’t have been me. As if I didn’t know that.”

“I didn’t mean it couldn’t have been you, not in that way. I only meant that you’d have well, you’d have behaved very differently, if it had been you; and so I believe you would.”

“You don’t know how I’d ’ave behaved.”

“I’ve a pretty good idea, though.” She looked straight at him this time, and he grew strangely brave.

“Look here, Flossie,” he said solemnly, “you know as I’ve just let it out that I’m most orf’ly gone on you. I don’t suppose there’s anything I wouldn’t do for you except well, I really don’t know what you’re driving at, but if it’s anything to do with Razors, I’d rather not hear about it, if you don’t mind. It isn’t fair, really. You see, it’s putting me in such a ’orribly delicate position.”

“I don’t think you’re very kind, Sidney. You don’t think of me, or what sort of a position you put me in. I’m sure I wouldn’t have said a word, only you asked me to tell you all about it; you needn’t say you didn’t.”

“That was when I thought, p’raps, I could help you to patch it up. But if I can’t, it’s another matter.”

“Patch it up? Do you think I’d let you try? I don’t believe in patching things up, once they’re broken off.”

“I say Flossie, it hasn’t come to that?”

“It couldn’t come to anything else, the way it was going.”

“Oh Lord” Spinks buried a crimson face in his hands. If only he hadn’t felt such a horrible exultation!

“I thought you knew. Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about all the time?”

I didnt understand. I only thought he didn’t tell me, mind you I thought it was just put off because he couldn’t afford to marry quite so soon.”

“Don’t you think three hundred a year is enough to marry on?”

“Well, I shouldn’t care to marry on that myself; not if it wasn’t regular. He’s quite right, Flossie. You see, a man hasn’t got only his wife to think of.”

“No I suppose he must think of himself a little too.”

“Oh well, no; if he’s a decent chap, he thinks of his children.”

Flossie’s face was crimson, too, while her thoughts flew to that unfurnished room in the brown house at Ealing. She was losing sight of Keith Rickman; for behind Keith Rickman there was Sidney Spinks; and behind Sidney Spinks there was the indomitable Dream. She did not look at Spinks, therefore, but gazed steadily at the top of Mr. Partridge’s head. With one word Spinks had destroyed the effect he had calculated on from his honourable reticence. Perhaps it was because Flossie’s thoughts had flown so far that her voice seemed to come from somewhere a long way off, too.

“What would you think enough to marry on, then?”

“Well, I shouldn’t care to do it much under four hundred myself,” he said guardedly.

“And I suppose if you hadn’t it you’d expect a girl to wait for you any time until you’d made it?”

“Well of course I should, if we were engaged already. But I shouldn’t ask any girl to marry me unless I could afford to keep her

“You wouldn’t ask, but

“No, and I wouldn’t let on that I cared for her either. I wouldn’t let on under four hundred certain.”

“Oh,” said Flossie very quietly. And Spinks was crushed under a sense of fresh disloyalty to Rickman. His defence of Rickman had been made to turn into a pleading for himself. “But Razors is different; he’ll be making twice that in no time, you’ll see. I shouldn’t be afraid to ask any one if I was him.”

Vainly the honourable youth sought to hide his splendour; Flossie had drawn from him all she needed now to know.

“Look, here, Floss, you say it’s broken off. Would you mind telling me was it you or was it he who did it?” His tone expressed acute anxiety on this point, for in poor Spinks’s code of honour it made all the difference. But he felt that his question was clearly answered, for the silence of Razors argued sufficiently that it was he.

“Well,” said Flossie with a touch of maidenly dignity, “whichever it was, it wasn’t likely to be Keith.”

Spinks’s face would have fallen, but for its immense surprise. In this case Rickman ought, yes, he certainly ought to have told him. It wasn’t behaving quite straight, he considered, to keep it from the man who had the best right in the world to know, a fellow who had always acted straight with him. But perhaps, poor chap, he was only waiting a little on the chance of the Beaver changing her mind.

“Don’t you think, Flossie, that if he tried hard he could bring it on again?”

“No, he couldn’t. Never. Not if he tried from now till next year. Not if he went on his bended knees to me.”

Spinks reflected that Rickman’s knees didn’t take kindly to bending. “Haven’t you been a little, just a little hard on him? He’s such a sensitive little chap. If I was a woman I don’t think I could let him go like that. You might let him have another try.”

Poor Spinks was so earnest, so sincere, so unaffectedly determined not to take advantage of the situation, that it dawned on Flossie that dignity must now yield a little to diplomacy. She was not making the best possible case for herself by representing the rupture as one-sided. “To tell you the truth, Sidney, he doesn’t want to try. We’ve agreed about it. We’ve both of us found we’d made a great mistake “.

“I wish I could be as sure of that.”

“Why, what difference could it make to you?” said Flossie, turning on him the large eyes of innocence, eyes so dark, so deep, that her thoughts were lost in them.

“It would make all the difference in the world, if I knew you weren’t making a lot bigger mistake now.” He rose, “I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll ’ave a few words with Rickets, after all. I think I’ll go up and see him now.”

There was no change in the expression of her eyes, but her eyelids quivered. “No, Sidney, don’t. For Goodness’ sake don’t go and say anything.”

“I’m not going to say anything. I only want to know

“I’ve told you everything everything I can.”

“Yes; but it’s what you can’t tell me that I want to know.”

“Well, but do wait a bit. Don’t you speak to him before I see him. Because I don’t want him to think I’ve given him away.”

“I’ll take good care he doesn’t think that, Flossie. But I’m going to get this off my mind to-night.”

“Well then, you must just take him a message from me. Say, I’ve thought it over and that I’ve told you everything. Don’t forget. I’ve told you everything, say. Mind you tell him that before you begin about anything else. Then he’ll understand.”

“All right. I’ll tell him.”

Her eyes followed him dubiously as he stumbled over Mr. Partridge’s legs in his excited crossing of the room. She was by no means sure of her ambassador’s discretion. His heart would make no blunder; but could she trust his head?

Up to this point Flossie had played her game with admirable skill. She had, without showing one card of her own, caused Spinks to reveal his entire hand. It was not until she had drawn from him the assurance of his imperishable devotion, together with the exact amount of his equally imperishable income, that she had committed herself to a really decisive move. She was perfectly well aware of its delicacy and danger. Not for worlds would she have had Spinks guess that Rickman was still waiting for her decision. And yet, if Spinks referred rashly and without any preparation to the breaking off of the engagement, Rickman’s natural reply would be that this was the first he had heard of it. Therefore did she so manoeuvre and contrive as to make Rickman suppose that Spinks was the accredited bearer of her ultimatum, while Spinks himself remained unaware that he was conveying the first intimation of it. It was an exceedingly risky thing to do. But Flossie, playing for high stakes, had calculated her risk to a nicety. She must make up her mind to lose something. As the game now stood the moral approbation of Spinks was more valuable to her than the moral approbation of Rickman; and in venturing this final move she had reckoned that the moral approbation of Rickman was all she had to lose. Unless, of course, he chose to give her away.

But Rickman could be trusted not to give her away.

When Spinks presented himself in Rickman’s study he obtained admission in spite of the lateness of the hour. The youth’s solemn agitation was not to be gainsaid. He first of all delivered himself of Flossie’s message, faithfully, word for word.

“Oh, so she’s told you everything, has she? And what did she tell you?”

“Why, that it was all over between you, broken off, you know.”

“And you’ve come to me to know if it’s true, is that it?”

“Well no, why should I? Of course it’s true if she says so.”

Rickman reflected for a moment; the situation, he perceived, was delicate in the extreme, delicate beyond his power to deal with it. But the god did not forsake his own, and inspiration came to him.

“You’re right there, Spinky. Of course it’s true if she says so.”

“She seemed to think you wouldn’t mind her telling me. She said you’d understand.”

“Oh yes, I think I understand. Did she tell you she had broken it off?” (He was really anxious to know how she had put it.)

“Yes, but she was most awfully nice about it. I made out I mean she gave me the impression that she did it, well, partly because she thought you wanted it off. But that’s just what I want to be sure about. Do you want it off, or don’t you?”

“Is that what she wants to know?”

“No. It’s what I want to know. What’s more, Rickets, I think I’ve got a fair right to know it, too.”

“What do you want me to say? That I don’t want to marry Miss Walker or that I do?”

Spinks’s face flushed with the rosy dawn of an idea. It was possible that Rickets didn’t want to marry her, that he was in need of protection, of deliverance. There was a great deed that he, Spinks, could do for Rickets. His eyes grew solemn as they beheld his destiny.

“Look here,” said he, “I want you to tell me nothing but the bally truth. It’s the least you can do under the circumstances. I don’t want it for her, well yes I do but I want it for myself, too.”

“All right, Spinky, you shall have the best truth I can give you at such uncommonly short notice. I can’t say I don’t want to marry Miss Walker, because that wouldn’t be very polite to the lady. But I can say I think she’s shown most admirable judgement, and that I’m perfectly satisfied with her decision. I wouldn’t have her go back, on it for worlds. Will that satisfy you?”

“It would if I thought you really meant it.”

“I do mean it, God forgive me. But that isn’t her fault, poor little girl. The whole thing was the most infernal muddle and mistake.”

“Ah that was what she called it a mistake.” Spinks seemed to be clinging to and cherishing this word of charm.

“I’m glad for her sake that she found it out in time. I’m not the sort of man a girl like Flossie ought to marry. I ought never to have asked her.”

“Upon my soul, Rickets, I believe you’re right there. That’s not saying anything against you, or against her either.”

“No. Certainly not against her. She’s all right, Spinky

“I know, I know.”

Still Spinks hesitated, restraining his ardent embrace of the truth presented to him, held back by some scruple of shy unbelieving modesty.

“Then you think, you really do think, that there isn’t any reason why I shouldn’t cut in?”

“No, Heaven bless you; no reason in the world, as far as I’m concerned. For God’s sake cut in and win; the sooner the better. Now, this minute, if you feel like it.”

But still he lingered, for the worst was yet to come. He lingered, nursing a colossal scruple. Poor Spinks’s honour was dear to him because it was less the gift of nature than the supreme imitative effort of his adoring heart. He loved honour because Rickman loved it; just as he had loved Flossie for the same reason. These were the only ways in which he could imitate him; and like all imitators he exaggerated the master’s manner.

“I say, I don’t know what you’ll think of me. I said I’d never let on to Flossie that I cared; and I didn’t mean to, I didn’t on my word. I don’t know how it happened; but to-night we got talking to tell you the truth I thought I was doing my best to get her to make it up with you

“Thanks; that was kind,” said Rickman in a queer voice which put Spinks off a bit.

“I was really, Razors. I do believe I’d have died rather than let her know how I felt about her; but before I could say knife

“She got it out of you?”

“No, she didn’t do anything of the sort. It was all me. Like a damn fool I let it out some’ow.”

Nothing could have been more demoralizing than the spectacle of Spinks’s face as he delivered himself of his immense confession; so fantastically did it endeavour to chasten rapture with remorse. Rickman controlled himself the better to enjoy it; for Spinks, taken seriously, yielded an inexhaustible vein of purest comedy. “Oh, Spinky,” he said with grave reproach, “how could you?”

“Well, I know it was a beastly dishonourable thing to do; but you see I was really most awkwardly situated.”

“I daresay you were.” It was all very well to laugh; but in spite of his amusement he sympathized with Spinky’s delicacy. He also had found himself in awkward situations more than once.

“Still,” continued Spinks with extreme dejection, “I can’t think how I came to let it out.”

That, and the dejection, was too much for Rickman’s gravity.

“If you want the truth, Spinky, the pity was you ever kept it in.”

And his laughter, held in, piled up, monstrous, insane, ungovernable, broke forth, dispersing the last scruple that clouded the beatitude of Spinks.