CHAPTER 2.VI.
I ventured for a few days to keep the light which chance had shed for me upon Armour's affairs to myself.

The whole thing considered in connection with his rare and delicate talent, seemed too derogatory and disastrous to impart without the sense of doing him some kind of injury in the mere statement.

But there came a point when I could no longer listen to Dora Harris's theories to account for him, wild idealizations as most of them were of any man's circumstances and intentions.

'Why don't you ask him point-blank ?' I said, and she replied, frowning slightly, 'Oh, I couldn't do that.

It would destroy something--I don't know what, but something valuable--between us.' This struck me as an exaggeration, considering how far, by that time, they must have progressed towards intimacy, and my mouth was opened.