Page:Tom Beauling (1901).pdf/207

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to destroy white ties. The fourth one proved more facile, and tied to his satisfaction. He surveyed himself.

"Who are you?" he said. And back came the blues.

"It isn't rights" he said. "I mustn't do it I must go away, and never come back. I must go to-night after dinner—now. I can get the German steamer for Gibraltar, catch the Caledonia for Australia, and be back in the old diggings before the world is a month older. Why didn't I play fair, and tell them in the first place? Why didn't I? But somehow you can't go around doing that. If somebody asks you to lunch, you can't answer, 'I will come with pleasure, if you have no objection to my being a—' It isn't fair. It isn't done. You've got to hide lots of things about yourself—even if you've got nothing that's specially criminal to hide. It isn't criminal being nobody—and somehow it never before seemed criminal to hide the fact. But I see it now. I should have told her father. I said, ever so many years ago,