passed back together to where the elder man had been standing, while St.
George said: "I hope you're never going away again. I've been dining
here; the General told me." He was handsome, he was young, he looked as
if he had still a great fund of life. He bent the friendliest, most
unconfessing eyes on his disciple of a couple of years before; asked him
about everything, his health, his plans, his late occupations, the new
book. "When will it be out--soon, soon, I hope? Splendid, eh? That's
right; you're a comfort, you're a luxury! I've read you all over again
these last six months." Paul waited to see if he would tell him what the
General had told him in the afternoon and what Miss Fancourt, verbally at
least, of course hadn't. But as it didn't come out he at last put the
question.

"Is it true, the great news I hear--that you're to be married?"

"Ah you have heard it then?"

"Didn't the General tell you?" Paul asked.

The Master's face was wonderful. "Tell me what?"

"That he mentioned it to me this afternoon?"

"My dear fellow, I don't remember. We've been in the midst of people.
I'm sorry, in that case, that I lose the pleasure, myself, of announcing
to you a fact that touches me so nearly. It _is_ a fact, strange as it
may appear. It has only just become one. Isn't it ridiculous?" St.
George made this speech without confusion, but on the other hand, so far
as our friend could judge, without latent impudence. It struck his
interlocutor that, to talk so comfortably and coolly, he must simply have