“Well, you would have been, you know. It comes to the same thing.”

George laughed. “I dare say I should; but I never meant to expose myself to such a fate.”

“George, my friend, do you think you’re speaking the truth?”

“I am speaking the truth.”

“Not a bit of it,” responded Vane, calmly. “A couple of months ago you meant to ask her; and, what’s more, she’d have had you.”

George was dimly conscious that this might be so.

“It isn’t my moral,” Vane went on.

“Your moral?”

“No. I took it from the Bull’s-eye.”

George groaned.