"Georgie"
"Be a man," said I encouragingly. "Look the thing in the face. After all, you know, Georgie, you asked the girl to marry you. You can't, in common decency, back out now."
"You're a hard-hearted brute." Georgie kicked viciously at the leg of the writing-table. "And it's all very well for you, engaged to a little peach of a girl that you've deliberately stolen from me; it 's all very well for you to talk about being a man and sticking to it. It is because I am a man that I can't. Think of Anne, and just imagine yourself in my place."
"Heaven forbid!" I cried hastily.
"Anne was never my idea of love's young dream. But you—"
"Oh, yes." Georgie flung his cap at a bronze bust in the corner of the library. "Rub it in! Do! Tell me it was all my own fault! You might have the sense to know that things are a jolly sight harder to bear when you've brought them on yourself."
"I do know," said I gently. And, in-
38
