"Why, no," I answered, mustering a cool smile. "Folly such as that goes by with youth."
"Your age is twenty-four?"
"Yes, I am twenty-four."
"And you love her no longer?"
"I tell you, no longer, sir."
The Vicar opened his box and took a large pinch.
"Then," said he, the pinch being between his finger and thumb and just half-way on the road to his nose, "you love some other woman, Simon."
He spoke not as a man who asks a question nor even as one who hazards an opinion; he declared a fact and needed no answer to confirm him. "Yes, you love some other woman, Simon," said he, and there left the matter.
"I don't," I cried indignantly. Had I told myself a hundred times that I was not in love to be told by another that I was? True, I might have been in love, had not——
"Ah, who goes there?" exclaimed the Vicar, springing nimbly to the window and looking out with eagerness. "I seem to know the gentleman. Come, Simon, look."