"I had already asked Mrs. Balfame to get a divorce and marry me."
"Oh! That night you walked home with her from Dr. Anna's cottage?"
"You saw us? Yes, that was the time."
"The first time you had ever talked alone with her? I know that you dined there often, but didn't Dave usually do the talking?"
"Yes."
"And Mrs. Balfame smiled like St. Cecilia and attended to your wants."
"Oh!"
"It was like you to think you couldn't go back on even an Elsinore Avenue flirtation. But once more—it is a terrible pity that you did not delay your formal offer for ten weeks. Then you would have buried the last and the supreme folly of your youth—with a sigh perhaps, but you would have buried it. Isn't that true?"
"It is true that something incredibly youthful seems to have persisted in me beyond its proper limits, and then to have died abruptly. God knows I have no youth in me to-day."