He had turned awkwardly, responsively red, he knew, at her mention of Maria Gostrey; Sarah Pocock's presence--the particular quality of it--had made this inevitable; and then he had grown still redder in proportion as he hated to have shown anything at all.

He felt indeed that he was showing much, as, uncomfortably and almost in pain, he offered up his redness to Waymarsh, who, strangely enough, seemed now to be looking at him with a certain explanatory yearning.

Something deep--something built on their old old relation--passed, in this complexity, between them; he got the side-wind of a loyalty that stood behind all actual queer questions.

Waymarsh's dry bare humour--as it gave itself to be taken--gloomed out to demand justice.

"Well, if you talk of Miss Barrace I've MY chance too," it appeared stiffly to nod, and it granted that it was giving him away, but struggled to add that it did so only to save him.