'I say,' Robert stopped him. 'Better not say anything about this to Miss—to Annie, eh?'
'I will say nothing,' agreed Liversage (infamously and unprofessionally concealing the fact that he had already said something).
And he departed.
The brothers sat in flustered meditation over the past and the future.
Ten years before, Annie Emery had been an orphan of twenty-three, bravely starting in business for herself amid the plaudits of the admiring town; and John had fallen in love with her courage and her sense and her feminine charm. But alas, as Ovid points out, how difficult it is for a woman to please only one man! Robert also had fallen in love with Annie. Each brother had accused the other of underhand and unbrotherly practices in the pursuit of Annie. Each was profoundly hurt by the accusations, and each, in the immense fatuity of his pride, had privately sworn to prove his innocence by having nothing more to do with Annie. Such is life! Such is man! Such is the terrible egoism of man! And thus it was that, for the sake of wounded pride, John and Robert not only did not speak to one another for ten years, but they spoilt at least one of their lives; and they behaved ignobly to Annie, who would certainly have married either one or the other of them.
At two o'clock in the morning John pulled a coin out of his pocket and made the gesture of tossing.
'Who shall go first!' he explained.
Robert had a queer sensation in his spine as his elder brother spoke to him for the first time in ten years. He wanted to reply vocally. He had a most imperious desire to reply vocally. But he could not. Something stronger even than the desire prevented his tongue from moving.
John tossed the coin—it was a sovereign—and covered it with his hands.
'Tail!' Robert murmured, somewhat hoarsely.