"I wished to break it gently to you—but that is the substance of it," he stammered.
Curious....
"Thank you, Weston," I said. "I quite understand. Will you please tell them that I didn't ask for any explanation?"
Exceedingly curious....
"Yes, yes, yes," he murmured sympathetically.
"Now," I said to myself some minutes later, as I descended the stairs, "it only requires Miss Angela to turn me down."
I walked to Woburn Place, and there asked a Swiss boy if I might see Miss Angela. Archie's friend Mr Shoto passed me as I waited in the hall, but I did not speak to him. After some minutes the Swiss boy returned. His answer was what I expected. Miss Soames had a nervous headache, and asked to be excused from seeing me.
And all, I thought with amazement as I turned away, because for a week or two I had worn a sky-blue uniform!
IV
That division of me into two men that I have said dated from the time when Kitty told me of Evie's engagement to Archie Merridew was, in a sense, no new thing. I had felt it in some measure before, when I had deliberately avoided Archie that I might give my anger its head and had smiled in his face again when the fit had worked itself out. I had striven, too, to stand between him and the black rages he and my general circumstances had provoked.