We turned off through the shrubbery, and went out by the side gate along the bypath to the links.  
Ranny walked behind, absolutely silent, till he burst out: "May I smoke?"
 
When he had lit a cigarette, I glanced back. I thought he looked a shade less miserable¹. I could see the four figures standing² out against the house, and still no sign anywhere of Eric.
 
I asked Ranny if he was to be one of the yachting party.
 
"Lord, no!"
 
Perhaps they had not asked him. Maybe that was it. I said something about how we should miss Hermione.
 
"Er—yes," he said. "I suppose you will," and I noticed his voice was steadier.
 
"Don't be ungrateful," I said. "So will you."
 
"Me?"
 
Then, as I reproached him, he said: "Oh, yes; awfully³ nice people the Helmstones. I used to be rather fond of Lady Helmstone. But she's a[Pg 179] woman who doesn't know how to take 'No.' That's partly why I came."
 
I looked back again: "Is that the only reason?"
 
"Well, she kept writing, and making out, in spite of what I'd said, that she was expecting me to join them at Marseilles. And had put off somebody else who wanted to go. If I backed out—I had never backed in—I would be breaking up the party and behaving like the devil." He spoke⁴ more ill-temperedly than I had ever heard him.
 
"How will it end?" I asked.
 
"End? I'm hanged if I'll go. I've told her I wouldn't, from the beginning. But I only convinced her yesterday."
 
We walked on.
 
"They've asked Betty," I said.
 
"No!" He caught me up and walked at my side. "When did they do that?"
 
"Yesterday evening."
 
"Is Betty going?"
 
"No," I said.
 
And very sharp on that: "Why not?" he asked. "Doesn't she want to?"
 
"She doesn't know anything about it. My[Pg 180] mother doesn't want her to go." And while he fell into silence again, I sent my eyes about the heath. No sign.
 
Suddenly I remembered Betty's "find out." I had not found out. I hadn't even tried, and I realised myself for a monster of selfishness—thinking Eric, Eric, and nothing but Eric the livelong day.
 
I pulled myself together and asked Ranny what he had been doing since Christmas.
 
"Since New Year's Eve, you mean." He frowned, and threw away a cigarette half-smoked, and lit another. When he had puffed⁵ and frowned a little more he said he had been going through a ghastly experience with a great friend of his. "Not a bad chap on the whole," he said, in a hesitating, almost appealing voice. But this not bad chap had "got himself badly bunkered." Ranny hesitated, and then: "Yes, I've been thinking I'd tell you about it, and see if—if you thought I've advised him right...." The friend, he said, had been "one of a house party at a place up in Norfolk. He'd gone for the fag end of the shooting. Last month it was. Beastly dull people. Awful good shooting—as a rule. But the weather[Pg 181] was rotten. All shut up together in that beastly dull house. Nothing earthly to do, except rag, and—you know the kind of thing."
 
I didn't know a bit, but I said I did.
 
"Well, his friend had nothing to do, and he got it into his head that the girl of the house rather liked him. And there wasn't another blessed thing to do, so—— Oh, well, they got engaged."
 
He waited for a moment, and then he said that when his friend went back to Aldershot he found "he wasn't any more in love with that girl than he was with the cat. It was all just a beastly mistake. So he got leave and went home to think it out. Couldn't think it out. Felt he'd better go and talk it over with somebody——" Ranny hesitated again. "Awful hole to be in, isn't it?"
 
I agreed it must have been very dreadful for his friend to have to tell the girl he'd made a mistake.
 
"Oh, but he couldn't do that!" With a shocked look, Ranny stopped dead for a second. Then, as he went on, he said that he had told his friend of course he'd have to go through with it.
 
"You don't mean," I said, "that when he was[Pg 182] feeling like that you think he ought to let the poor girl marry him!"
 
He said I didn't see the point. It would probably spoil the gi............