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"What have you been doing that you oughtn't to do?" was his greeting. "There's a special-delivery letter for you from a firm of lawyers, and a deep male voice has been telephoning at intervals of twenty minutes to know if you have come in yet."

"Lawyers?" said Bevans, without interest, taking up the letter with a languid hand. "It's all up between me and Susie."

David sat up with one motion of his entire body.

"Yesterday it was all on."

"I was wrong. Her feeling seems to be that if some day I came back with enough money to marry she wouldn't be any more opposed to me than to the next man."

"Do you believe it's just the money question?" asked David, loyally.

"I'd go a good way on the downward path to get some at this moment," Bevans answered, and began tearing open the envelop in his hand.

Silences, as every observer knows, have strange characteristics all their own—passionate silences, and hateful silences, and silences full of friendly, purring content. The silence that followed the opening of ​Bevans's letter was frankly portentous. It was not that Bevans's manner altered, though there may have been a slight change in the rhythm of his breathing, but somehow David knew at once that the letter contained something of supreme importance. So, being a good friend, he said nothing, but sat watching Bevans out of the corner of his eye as a dog watches his master to see if he is going to be taken for a walk.