No More Learning

'They were really old companions--that is all,' said Mrs. Sherman,
wishing to mend matters. 'They were both readers; that brought them
together. I never much fancied her. Yet she was well enough as a
friend, and helped, maybe, with reading, and the gardening, and
his good bringing-up, to keep him from the idle young men of the
neighbourhood. '

'You must make him write and tell her at once--you must, you must! '
almost sobbed out Miss Leland.

'I promise,' he answered.

Immediately returning to herself, she cried, 'If I were in her place
I know what I would like to do when I got the letter. I know who I
would like to kill! '--this with a laugh as she went over and looked at
herself in the mirror on the mantlepiece.


THIRD PART

JOHN SHERMAN REVISITS BALLAH


I

The others had gone, and Sherman was alone in the drawing-room by
himself, looking through the window. Never had London seemed to him so
like a reef whereon he was cast away. In the Square the bushes were
covered with dust; some sparrows were ruffling their feathers on the
side-walk; people passed, continually disturbing them. The sky was full
of smoke.
A terrible feeling of solitude in the midst of a multitude
oppressed him. A portion of his life was ending. He thought that soon
he would be no longer a young man, and now, at the period when the
desire of novelty grows less, was coming the great change of his life.
He felt he was of those whose granaries are in the past. And now this
past would never renew itself. He was going out into the distance as
though with strange sailors in a strange ship.

He longed to see again the town where he had spent his childhood: to
see the narrow roads and mean little shops. And perhaps it would be
easier to tell her who had been the friend of so many years of this
engagement in his own person than by letter. He wondered why it was so
hard to write so simple a thing.

It was his custom to act suddenly on his decisions. He had not made
many in his life. The next day he announced at the office that he would
be absent for three or four days. He told his mother he had business in
the country.

His betrothed met him on the way to the terminus, as he was walking,
bag in hand, and asked where he was going. 'I am going on business to
the country,' he said, and blushed. He was creeping away like a thief.