On this particular evening I had been kidding him about his depression, doing my best to rouse him out of it.
“Oh, I’ll pull round in time,” he said, in his resigned, lifeless tone. “If you knew the reason—”
I did know the reason, of course. My conscience never ceased to plague me with the fact that, though I could return Regina Barry’s trinkets, Cantyre’s secret was a theft I couldn’t get rid of. It was, indeed, partly to lead him on to confiding it to me of his own accord, so that I might know it legitimately, so to speak, that I brought the subject up.
“I suppose it’s about a girl.”
So long a time passed that I thought he was not going to respond to this challenge, when he said, “Yes.”
“Wouldn’t she have you?” I asked, bluntly.
“She said she would—and changed her mind.”
“So that you were actually engaged?”
“For about a month.”
“Did she— You don’t mind my asking questions, do you?”