matters; but on that day John was really ill, and so had escaped the visit which otherwise would have been inevitable. Mr Whichelo came that evening to bring his principal’s regrets. “He was very much cut up about not seeing you,” said the head-clerk. “You know your own affairs best, and I don’t wish to be intrusive; but I think you would find it work better not to keep him at such a distance.”

For

[Pg 50]

“I keep Mr Crediton at a distance!” said John, with a grimace of pain.

“You do, Mr Mitford. I don’t say that he is always what he might be expected to be;[Pg 51] but, anyhow, no advances come from your side.”

[Pg 51]

“It is not from my side advances should come,” John said, turning his face to the wall with an obstinacy which was almost sullen; while at the same time he said to himself at the bottom of his heart, What does it matter? These were but the merest outward details. The real question was very different. Did a woman know what love meant?—was it anything but a diversion to her—an amusement? was what he was asking himself; while a man, on the other hand, might give up his life for it, and annul himself, all for a passing smile—a smile that was quite as bright to the next comer. Such thoughts were thorns in John’s pillow as he tossed and groaned. They burned and gnawed at his heart worse than his outward wounds; and there were no cool applications which could be made to them. He did not want to be spoken to, nor to have even the friendliest light thrown upon the workings of his mind. To be let alone—to be left to make the best of it—to be allowed to resume his work quietly, and go and come, and wait until[Pg 52] the problem had been solved for him, or until he himself had solved it,—it seemed to John that he wished for nothing more.

[Pg 52]

“That may be,” said Mr Whichelo; “but all the same you don’t take much pains to conciliate him—though that is not my business. A man who has had a number of us round him all his life always anxious to conciliate—as good men as himself any day,” the head-clerk added, with some heat, “but still in a measure dependent upon his will for our bread—it takes a strong head to stand such a strain, Mr Mitford. An employer is pretty near a despot, unless he’s a very good man. I don’t want to say a word against Mr Crediton——”

“Much better not,” said John, with another revulsion of feeling, not 

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