who are waiting for the moment to speak things in which their lives and feelings are more intimately concerned.
At length they came to a bending in the river where there was a bank of green turf on which in the past they had often sat and smoked and talked while that small and lonely river flowed before them. Seated here again, and provided with cigarettes, a silence came between them, as if each was waiting for the other one to speak.
Presently when Eugene looked towards his companion, Starwick’s pleasant face with the cleft chin was turned towards the river in a set stare, and even as the other young man looked at him, his ruddy countenance was contorted by the animal-like grimace swift and instant, which the other boy had often seen before, and which had in it, somehow, a bestial and inarticulate quality, a kind of unspeakable animal anguish that could find no release.
In a moment, lowering his head, and staring away into the grassy turf, Starwick said quietly:
“Why have you not been in to see me these last two months?”
The other young man flushed, began to speak in a blundering and embarrassed tone and then, angered by his own confusion, burst out hotly:
“Look here, Frank—why have you got to be so damned mysterious and secretive in everything you do?”
“Am I?” said Starwick quietly.
“Yes, you are! You’ve been that way ever since I met you.”
“In what way?” Starwick asked.
“Do you remember the first time I met you?” the other one demanded.
“Perfectly,” Starwick said. “It was during your first year in Cambridge, a few days after you arrived. We met for dinner at the’Cock Horse Tavern’.”
“Yes,” the other said excitedly. “Exactly. You had written me a note inviting me to dinner, and asking me to meet you there. Do you remember what was in that note?”
“No. What was it?”
“Well, you said:’Dear Sir—I should be pleased if you will meet me for dinner at seven-thirty, Wednesday evening, at the”Cock Horse Tavern“ on Brattle Street.’And the note was signed,’Francis Starwick.’”
“Well?” Starwick demanded quietly. “And what was wrong with that?”
“Nothing!” the other young man cried, his face flushing to a darker hue and the excitement of his manner growing. “Nothing,
