And (I am still talking purely hypothetically) I now recognise that I had prepared our respective mental attitudes with instinctive skill. That clever fiend within me had seen to that before I had become awake to that fiend's existence. By about the—till say a fortnight before the day fixed for his wedding—none could have told that I had the shadow of a grudge against him. He had made, for his slander of myself, a sort of semi-public apology—that is to say, he had mumbled a few words in the presence of Weston and the Principal of the College; but by that time the question of slander had been already so far from me that I had hardly had to affect an equanimity of manner. Without any effort whatever I had hit the necessary degree of magnanimity to a nicety, and there had been an end of that. I was free to return to the college again. This now mattered little since we were within a few days of the end of the summer term, and it was proposed to have, not a breaking-up party on the premises, but a boating-picnic at Richmond.
That I was in love with Evie Soames none knew. Did they? Could they? She was engaged to Archie, I to Kitty Windus; but I examined it again, to make sure.... No, no suspicion of jealousy could attach to me; none would think of a crime passionel.... And was it jealousy? Was it a crime passionel? I do not think you can say it was. True, I intended in the teeth of all the world to marry Evie Soames, just as I intended one day to be rich and to make my inherent power felt; but there would have been other ways than murder of accomplishing that. I should have found a way.... No; he had the best reason in the world for what I was so carefully planning for him. To me none whatever could be attributed. My preparations (for the worst, of course) would be complete when I had made use of that paper I carried in my pocket.
It was one evening less than a week before the day of his wedding that I chose for the completion of these preparations, and I had walked with him as far as his home. There, with a good-night, I was artfully passing on when he himself detained me.
"Aren't you coming up for a bit?" he said. He had been monstrously hospitable since I had taken him to task about the slander. I had reckoned on this.
"No," I replied, "I must get some shorthand practice—I'm off home."
"Oh, come in," he urged, taking my arm. "I sha'n't get much either this few weeks—come in, and we'll have an hour together at speed. Come on—I've got some books you may as well have—I sha'n't want two sets."
He meant he wouldn't want Evie's text-books as well as his own. I had not been able to afford books for my studies, and so had had to make use of those belonging to the college. This was the nearest he had come since my accusation to speaking about Evie and himself together.
I went up to his rooms for a speed practice in Pitman's Shorthand.
"Here are the books," he said, when he got in. "Better put 'em where you'll have your hand on 'em—once you lose sight of a thing in this mess you can say good-bye to it. That blessed latchkey of mine hasn't turned up yet. Well, shall we get work over first and then talk a bit?"
He swept aside with his arm a heap of new shirts and collars and tissue-paper, took a writing-pad from the drawer of his table, and then looked round for something from which to read aloud. I produced from my pocket a newspaper, which I tossed over to him. I also had cleared a portion of the table for myself and was sharpening a pencil. My pad lay before me. He was taking his watch from the guard.