“Why?” said Millicent.
“Why, why, why?” Hyman echoed.
Dick, who had been blowing out smoke at a great rate, put down his pipe. The taste of the tobacco was making him feel rather sick. “I wish you would stop,” he said wearily. “If I gave you the real reasons, you wouldn’t believe me. And I can’t invent any others that would be in the least convincing.”
“I believe the real reason is that you were afraid of prison.”
Dick leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. He did not mind being insulted now; it made no difference. Hyman and Millicent were still talking about him, but what they said did not interest him; he scarcely listened.
They went back to London together in the evening.
“Very intelligent woman, your sister,” said Hyman just before they were starting. “Pity she’s not on the right side about the war and so forth.”
Four weeks later Dick received a letter in which Hyman announced that he and Millicent had decided to get married.
“I am happy to think,” Dick wrote in his congratulatory reply, “that it was I who brought you together.”