"Never mind them. Seriously, I mean it."
"It's a shame, when they've been waiting, but there—it's delightful to be unkind to other people, and treat them badly for your sake. It shall be as you wish. It is wrong, though! Aren't you ashamed?"
A little later eleven o'clock struck. Evarne pinned on her hat.
"Oh, don't go yet! It's far too early," cried Geoffrey.
But Evarne only smiled.
"On the contrary, it is rather late. Say good-bye quickly," she responded.
The timepiece ticked on placidly, neither faster nor slower than its usual steady wont.
"Goodness gracious, Geoff, you must send that silly old clock to be mended. It actually has jumped a whole quarter of an hour! It is no use its pretending we have been twenty minutes saying good-bye. Do call a taxi quickly."
"And to-morrow I'm coming to supper with you. Oh dear me! twenty-four hours to wait!"
"Only about twenty now; and remember, if our stars in their courses had not chanced to touch, we might have both lived twenty-four years more—and more still—and been lonely to the end. See what we have escaped."