"I never knew you to do it before for any girl."
"You never knew any girl before that I had determined to make my wife."
Olney did not stare. A crimson glow crept from throat to brow, but he did not cease in his walk for some time. The desultory conversation stopped again for a time; then he paused in his walk, at no great distance from Leith, and leaned his elbow upon the mantel-shelf.
"Dear old boy, this is the first time in all our histories that it has ever happened," he said, somberly.
Once more Leith looked up from his lesson, this time with a faint show of annoyance.
"Why will you persist in breaking out in that fashion, as if you expected me to know in what groove your mind has been wandering for the last half hour?" he asked, irritably. "It is the first time that what has ever happened?"
"That you and I have fallen in love with the same woman!"
Leith looked at his friend for a moment, then put his book upon the table, face downward, and threw his cigar into the cuspidor.
"I was afraid of that," he said, slowly.
"Afraid of it!" echoed Olney. "You must have known it."