"I was trying to dodge you.

I've been playing fast and loose with you, Loudon; I've deceived you from the first, I blush to own it.

And here you came home and put the very question I was fearing.

Why did we bust so soon?
Your keen business eye had not deceived you.

That's the point, that's my shame; that's what killed me this afternoon when Mamie was treating you so, and my conscience was telling me all the time, Thou art the man." "What was it, Jim ?" I asked.
"What I had been at all the time, Loudon," he wailed; "and I don't know how I'm to look you in the face and say it, after my duplicity.