“Did you tell her so?” asked Herne in his obvious manner.
“I couldn’t very well,” replied the other, “just when she was under sort of an obligation to me.”
“My dear Murrel,” cried Herne with impulsive simplicity, “this is quite quixotic!”
Murrel sprang to his feet and sent up a single shout of laughter.
“You have made the best joke in three hundred years,” he said.
“I don’t see it,” said Herne thoughtfully. “Is it generally considered possible to make a joke and not to see it? But in the matter of what you said, don’t you think there might be a statute of limitations allowing you a fresh start? Would you like to go down–down to the west again?”
Murrel’s brow seemed knotted with a new embarrassment. “The truth is I rather avoided the neighbourhood–and the subject. I thought that you–”
“I know what you mean,” said Herne. “For a long time I could hardly look out of a window facing that way. I wanted to turn my back on the west wind; and the sunsets burned me like red-hot irons. But a man gets calmer as the years go by, even if he doesn’t get more cheerful. I don’t think I could go to the house itself; but I would really be glad to hear the news about–anybody.”
“Oh if we go there,” said Murrel cheerfully, “I’ll undertake to go in and enquire.”
“Do you mean,” asked Herne almost timidly, “go into–Seawood Abbey?”