tiresome plays where misunderstandings are manufactured and so
carefully sustained that the audience are too bored to wait for the
_dénouement._ You can do that on the stage; but we wanted our
_dénouement._

'I'm very sorry,' I said, 'but I wish you had told me all about it.
Won't you now? Just the bare, matter-of-fact truth. I hate sentiment,
and so do you.'

'I find it very difficult to tell people things,' said Davies,
'things like this.' I waited. 'I did like her--very much.' Our eyes
met for a second, in which all was said that need be said, as between
two of our phlegmatic race. 'And she's--separate from him. That was
the reason of all my indecisions.' he hurried on. 'I only told you
half at Schlei. I know I ought to have been open, and asked your
advice. But I let it slide. I've been hoping all along that we might
find what we want and win the game without coming to close quarters
again.'

I no longer wondered at his devotion to the channel theory, since,
built on conviction, it was thus doubly fortified.

'Yet you always knew what might happen,' I said. 'At Schlei you spoke
of "settling with" Dollmann.'

'I know. When I thought of him I was mad. I made myself forget the
other part.'

'Which recurred at Brunsbüttel?' I thought of the news we had there.