"Here! I brought you some sweets." The invalid put them aside.
"It's not been much of a week-end," said Morel.
"How's your mother ?" asked the other.
"Hardly any different." "I thought she was perhaps worse, being as you didn't come on Sunday." "I was at Skegness," said Paul.

"I wanted a change." The other looked at him with dark eyes.

He seemed to be waiting, not quite daring to ask, trusting to be told.
"I went with Clara," said Paul.
"I knew as much," said Dawes quietly.
"It was an old promise," said Paul.
"You have it your own way," said Dawes.
This was the first time Clara had been definitely mentioned between them.
"Nay," said Morel slowly; "she's tired of me." Again Dawes looked at him.
"Since August she's been getting tired of me," Morel repeated.
The two men were very quiet together.

Paul suggested a game of draughts.
They played in silence.
"I s'll go abroad when my mother's dead," said Paul.
"Abroad!" repeated Dawes.
"Yes; I don't care what I do." They continued the game.

Dawes was winning.
"I s'll have to begin a new start of some sort," said Paul; "and you as well, I suppose." He took one of Dawes's pieces.
"I dunno where," said the other.
"Things have to happen," Morel said.