or later, one of the unhappiest of women.  Thinking of you in this way, and being in the place of a parent to Cecily, am I doing my duty or not in insisting that she shall not marry you hastily, that even in her own despite she shall have time to study you and herself, that she shall only take the irrevocable step when she clearly knows that it is done on her own responsibility?  You may urge what you like; I am not so foolish as to suppose you capable of consideration for others in your present state of mind.  I, however, shall defend myself from the girl’s reproaches in after-years.  There will be no marriage until she is twenty-one.”

A silence of some duration followed.  Elgar sat with bent head, twisting his moustaches.  At length: 

“I believe you are right, Mallard.  Not in your judgment of me, but in your practical resolve.”

Mallard examined him from under his eyebrows.

“You are prepared to wait?” he asked, in an uncertain voice.

“Prepared, no.  But I grant the force of your arguments.  I will try to bring myself to patience.”

Mallard sat unmoving.  His legs were crossed, and he held his soft felt hat crushed together in both his hands.  Elgar glanced at him once or twice, expecting him to speak, but the other was mute.

“Your judgment of me,” Elgar resumed, “is harsh and unfounded.  I don’t know how you have formed it.  You know nothing of what it means to me to love such a girl as Cecily.  Here I have found my rest.  It supplies me with no new qualities, but it strengthens those I have.  You picture me being unfaithful to Cecily—­deserting her, becoming brutal to her?  There must be a strange prejudice in your mind to excite such images.”  He examined Mallard’s face.  “Some day I will remind you of your prophecies.”

Mallard regarded him, and spoke at length, in a strangely jarring, discordant voice.

“I said that hastily.  I make no prophecies.  I wished to say that those seemed to me the probabilities.”

“Thank you for the small mercy, at all events,” said Elgar, with a laugh.

“What do you intend to do?” Mallard proceeded to ask, changing his position.

“I can make no plans yet.  I have pretended to only too often.  You have no objection to my remaining here?”

“You must take your own course—­with the understanding to which we have come.”

“I wish I could make you look more cheerful, Mallard.  I owe it to you, for you have given me more gladness than I can utter.”

“You can do it.”

“How?”

“See her to-morrow morning, and then go back to England, and make yourself some kind of reputable existence.”

“Not yet.  That is asking too much.  Not so soon.”

“As you please.  We understand each other on the main point.”

“Yes.  Are you going back to Amalfi?”

“I don’t know.”

They talked for a few minutes more, in short sentences of this kind, but did not advance beyond the stage of mutual forbearance.  Mallard lingered, as though not sure that he had fulfilled his mission.  In the end he went away abruptly.