'Good-bye.' Chilver held a minute the hand he had put out. 'Don't be too long. My secondary effect on you may perhaps be better.'
'Oh, it isn't really you. I mean it's her.'
'Talking about her? Then we'll talk of something else. You'll give me the account———'
'Oh, as I told you, there was no account!' Braddle quite artlessly broke in. Chilver laughed out again at this, and his interlocutor went on: 'What's the matter is that, though it's none of my business, I can't resist a brutal curiosity—a kind of suspense.'
'Suspense?' Chilver echoed with good-humoured deprecation.
'Of course I do see you're thoroughly happy.'
'Thoroughly.'
Braddle still waited. 'Then it isn't anything———?'
'Anything?'
'To make a row about. I mean what you know.'
'But I don't know.'
'Not yet? She hasn't told you?'
'I haven't asked.'
Braddle wondered. 'But it's six months.'
'It's seven. I've let it pass.'
'Pass?' Braddle repeated with a strange sound.
'So would you in my place.'
'Oh, no, I beg your pardon!' Braddle almost exultantly declared. 'But I give you a year.'
'That's what I've given,' said Chilver, serenely.
His companion had a gasp. 'Given her?'
'I bettered even, in accepting it, the great condition. I allowed her double the time.'
Braddle wondered till he turned almost pale. 'Then it's because you're afraid.'
'To spoil my happiness?'
'Yes—and hers.'
