by the thought that it would be better to leave everything till to-morrow.  As long as they were silent they did not look at each other, and a foreboding came across Adam that if they began to speak as though they remembered the past—­if they looked at each other with full recognition—­they must take fire again.  So they sat in silence till the bit of wax candle flickered low in the socket, the silence all the while becoming more irksome to Adam.  Arthur had just poured out some more brandy-and-water, and he threw one arm behind his head and drew up one leg in an attitude of recovered ease, which was an irresistible temptation to Adam to speak what was on his mind.

“You begin to feel more yourself again, sir,” he said, as the candle went out and they were half-hidden from each other in the faint moonlight.

“Yes:  I don’t feel good for much—­very lazy, and not inclined to move; but I’ll go home when I’ve taken this dose.”

There was a slight pause before Adam said, “My temper got the better of me, and I said things as wasn’t true.  I’d no right to speak as if you’d known you was doing me an injury:  you’d no grounds for knowing it; I’ve always kept what I felt for her as secret as I could.”

He paused again before he went on.

“And perhaps I judged you too harsh—­I’m apt to be harsh—­and you may have acted out o’ thoughtlessness more than I should ha’ believed was possible for a man with a heart and a conscience.  We’re not all put together alike, and we may misjudge one another.  God knows, it’s all the joy I could have now, to think the best of you.”

Arthur wanted to go home without saying any more—­he was too painfully embarrassed in mind, as well as too weak in body, to wish for any further explanation to-night.  And yet it was a relief to him that Adam reopened the subject in a way the least difficult for him to answer.  Arthur was in the wretched position of an open, generous man who has committed an error which makes deception seem a necessity.  The native impulse to give truth in return for truth, to meet trust with frank confession, must be suppressed, and duty was becoming a question of tactics.  His deed was reacting upon him—­was already governing him tyrannously and forcing him into a course that jarred with his habitual feelings.  The only aim that seemed admissible to him now was to deceive Adam to the utmost:  to make Adam think better of him than he deserved.  And when he heard the words of honest retractation—­when he heard the sad appeal with which Adam ended—­he was obliged to rejoice in the remains of ignorant confidence it implied.  He did not answer immediately, for he had to be judicious and not truthful.

“Say no more about our anger, Adam,” he said, at last, very languidly, for the labour of speech was unwelcome to him; “I forgive your momentary injustice—­it was quite natural, with the exaggerated notions you had in your mind.  We shall be none the worse friends in future, I hope, because we’ve fought.  You had the best of it, and that was as it should be, for I believe I’ve been most in the wrong of the two.  Come, let us shake hands.”