Dudley explains.

As the cry of horror escaped the lips of Max, Dudley wheeled quickly round and met his eyes.

For a moment the two men stood staring at each other without uttering a word.  It seemed to Max that his friend did not recognize him; that he looked like a hunted man brought to bay by his pursuer, with the furtive expression in his eyes of a creature trying to devise some means of escape.

It was the most shocking experience that Max had ever known, and the blood seemed to freeze in his veins as he stood by the table watching his friend, trying to conjure back a smile to his own face and look of welcome into his own eyes.

He found his voice at last.

“Why, Horne,” cried he, and he was angry with himself as he noted that his voice was hoarse and tremulous, and that he could not manage to bring out his natural tones, “what have you been doing with yourself?  I—­I’ve been backward and forward here all day long, and now I’ve been waiting for you ever so long!”

There was a pause.  Dudley was still staring at him, but there was gradually coming over his face a change which showed recognition, followed by annoyance.  He drew himself up, and, after a pause, asked, stiffly: 

“What did you want with me?”

He spoke more naturally than Max had managed to do, and as the latter replied, he took out his pocket-handkerchief very calmly and began to wipe the stain off his right hand.

Max shuddered.

“Why, is it such a very unusual thing for me to drop in upon you and to want to see you?” he asked, with another attempt at his ordinary manner, which failed almost as completely as the first had done.

There was another short pause.  Dudley, without looking again at his friend, examined his hand, saw that it was now clean, and replaced the soiled handkerchief in his pocket.  He seemed by this time to be thoroughly at his ease, but Max was not deceived.

“Of course not,” said Dudley, quickly.  “I only meant that—­considering”—­he paused, and seemed to be trying to recollect something—­“considering what took place down at Datton yesterday and how anxious your father seemed to be rid of me—­”

“But what has my father got to do with me, as far as you are concerned, Dudley, eh?” said Max.

There had come upon him suddenly such a strong impression that his friend was in some awful difficulty, some scrape so terrible as to make him lonely beyond the reach of help, that Max, who was a good-hearted fellow and a stanch friend, spoke with something which might almost be called tenderness: 

“We’ve always been chums, now, haven’t we?  And a row between you and Doreen, or between you and my father, wouldn’t make any difference to me.  I—­I suppose you don’t mean to give me the cold shoulder for the future, eh?”

Dudley had turned his back upon him, and was standing on the hearth-rug, looking down at the fire, in an attitude which betrayed to his friend the uneasiness from which he was suffering.  It was an attitude of constraint, as different as possible from any in which Max had ever seen him.