She got over her 'mad' three weeks ago. You ought to go and look her up."
Don blew out the lamp, abruptly, without replying, and came slowly to bed, where he lay silent with his thoughts.
But Conroy, moved to confidences in the dark, like a schoolgirl in bed with her room-mate, began to confess himself to his cousin with a sort of tentative frankness that seemed always on the point of ending in the silences which interrupted it, but which broke out afresh after every pause. And behind the halting sentences, Don could see how the son of the merchant, come among these "sports" whom he admired and tried to imitate, had never been accepted by them, because of the home training which had left him ignorant of wines and theatres and low talk of women; how he had toadied to them and spent his money on them, and they had despised him for it; how he had brought liquor to his rooms for them, and helped to drink it in a mean ambition to prove himself as much a man of the world as any of them; how he had even made his boast about the photograph with the same aim, and how they had gleefully betrayed him to his cousin as soon as they saw that the betrayal would humiliate him. "They're a lot of cads, Don—that gang. You should hear them talk about the girls they know. And they sponge on you for everything, and try to get you drunk. And when you get into trouble they won't stand by you. Pittsey was the best of the whole crowd, and he hadn't a good word to say for any of them."
Don listened with a divided mind, trying to repress
