“About me.”
“Oh!” Tom's eyes fell at once from his friend's face and rested upon the floor. Slowly he walked to the desk and stood in embarrassed contemplation of the littered books and papers, while the other waited.
“I think it's best for you to tell me,” said Crailey.
“You think so?” Tom's embarrassment increased visibly, and there was mingled with it an odd appearance of apprehension, probably to relieve which he very deliberately took two long cheroots from his pocket, laid one on the desk for Crailey and lit the other himself, with extreme carefulness, at the candle. After this ceremonial he dragged a chair to the window, tilted back in it with his feet on the low sill, his back to the thin light and his friend, and said in a slow, gentle tone: “Well, Crailey?”
“I suppose you mean that I ought to offer my explanation first,” said the other, still standing. “Well, there isn't any.” He did not speak doggedly or sullenly, as one in fault, but more with the air of a man curiously ready to throw all possible light upon a cloudy phenomenon. “It's very simple—all that I know about it. I went there first on the evening of the Madrillon masquerade and played a little comedy for her, so that some of my theatrical allusions—they weren't very illuminating!—to my engagement to Fanchon, made her believe I was Vanrevel when her father told her about the pair of us. I discovered that the night his warehouses burned—and I saw something more, because I can't help seeing such things: that yours was just the character to appeal to a young girl fresh from the convent and full of honesty and fine dreams and fire. Nobody could arrange a more fatal fascination for a girl of nineteen than to have a deadly quarrel with her father. And that's especially true when the father's like that mad brute of a Bob Carewe! Then, too, you're more or less the town model of virtue and popular hero, in spite of the Abolitionism, just as I am the town scamp. So I let it go on, and played a little at being you, saying the things that you only think—that was all. It isn't strange that it's lasted until now, not more than three weeks, after all. She's only seen you four or five times, and me not much oftener. No one speaks of you to her, and I've kept out of sight when others were about. Mrs. Tanberry is her only close friend, and, naturally, wouldn't be apt to mention that you are dark and I am fair, or to describe us personally, any more than you and I would mention the general appearance of people we both meet about town. But you needn't tell me that it can't last much longer. Some petty, unexpected trifle will turn up, of course. All that I want to know is what you mean to do.”
“To do?” repeated Tom softly, and blew a long scarf of smoke out of the window.
“Ah!” Crailey's voice grew sharp and loud. “There are many things you needn't tell me! You need not tell me what I've done to you—nor what you think of me! You need not tell me that you have others to consider, that you have Miss Carewe to think of. Don't you suppose I know that? And you need not tell me that you have a duty to Fanchon—”
“Yes,” Tom broke in, his tone not quite steady. “Yes, I've thought of that.”
“Well?”
“Have you—did you—” he hesitated, but Crailey understood immediately.