“Not since the day you gave me your word of honour that it was so.”
It may appear strange, but I have always been singularly fastidious about my word of honour.
Grahame then broke to me some news which came as a staggering blow. Sibella was engaged to Lionel Holland.
“The one thing I really like about Holland,” he concluded, “is the way he has stuck to Sibella.”
I could not simulate indifference, and Grahame saw that his announcement had been a shock to me.
I stood looking out on the little garden with its soot-begrimed walls which the sunset had drenched in scarlet, trying to control the tempest of feeling which surged within me.
Grahame understood, and came over, putting his arm round my neck.
“I am so sorry, Israel. I quite understand. Really, I’d sooner it were you.”
I smiled somewhat bitterly.
Grahame’s preference for me was hardly a consolation, fond as I was of him.