"Certainly it was not because I did not long to see you," he said.
Maurice smiled, but Philip sensitively felt a veiled impatience in his tone as he replied:—
"Oh, Phil, if I could only get the ascetic nonsense out of you!"
Ashe could not answer. He could not reprove his friend after the separation—which to him had been so long and so sorrowful, and he had a secret feeling that they were to be more entirely divided. The pair walked in silence a moment, and then Wynne spoke.
"Well, I'll not talk on forbidden subjects; but, surely, Phil, you are not going to throw me over entirely. I wouldn't drop you, no matter what happened."
"I'm not throwing you over," Philip answered with a choking in his throat. "I would—Oh, Maurice," he broke out, interrupting himself, "it isn't for want of caring for you, but if I am ever to help you, I must keep my own faith. I have been so troubled and so—There," he broke off again, "let us talk of something else."
He felt that Maurice was studying him carefully.
"Phil, old fellow, you are hysterically incoherent. What's the matter with you? It can't be all my going off. Can't you come home with me, and talk it out?"
Ashe shook his head. The more he was touched and moved by the affection of his friend, the more he shrank from him. This tender comradeship seemed to him the most subtile of temptations. He feared, moreover, lest he might reveal to Maurice too much of what was in his heart.
"Not now," he said. "I must go home at once."