‘You come with me?’ said Paul to the young Bostonian when the terminus was reached, and the final adieux had been said amongst the rest.
‘Well, no,’ said Mr. Janes. ‘I am a little out of sorts for some reason or another, and I think that I’ll go home.’
‘Well, then,’ said Paul, ‘I go with you. It’s all the same; but I have something to say to you. It won’t keep, Janes, and whether you and I like it or no, it has to be spoken.’
‘Oh,’ said Janes, ‘that sounds serious!’
‘Come to the Rue Castiglione with me,’ Paul answered, ‘and I will tell you exactly how serious it is.’
‘Very well,’ the younger man answered, and Paul having chartered a fiacre, they drove home together.
Arrived at his hotel, Paul ordered, and his guest refused, a whisky-and-soda, and the two sat down at a table in Paul’s bedroom.
‘Mr. Janes,’ he began, ‘I hope very sincerely that what am about to say will not wound you—much. It is sure to hurt you a little at first, but it is meant in friendship. Let me begin by telling you that for some three years of my life, more or less, I made an unexampled ass of myself about a certain lady. And now let me confess that I was put into a beastly corner this afternoon, and could not help overhearing a conversation in which the lady held a part. That conversation was identical in result, and almost identical in terms, with one in which I took part about a year and a half ago.’
Young Mr. Janes set his elbows on the table, and rested his face upon his hands. He was silent for a long time, but at last he said:
‘I cannot judge of the delicacy or otherwise of your statement, Mr. Armstrong, but I leave Paris to-morrow morning, and I shall not return. I should have gone, sir, without this revelation from you, and I am sorry that you have made it.’