"I--oh, no," he answered, "I can't have it ... till the end of the
session. I'm used to it too."

He began talking briskly about the "_Cromwell_;" proofs had emerged from
the infinite and wanted attention. There were innumerable little
matters, things to be copied for the appendix and revisions. It was
impossible for me to keep my mind upon them.

It had come suddenly home to me that this was the world that I belonged
to; that I had come back to it as if from an under world; that to this I
owed allegiance. She herself had recognised that; she herself had bidden
me tell him what was a-gate against him. It was a duty too; he was my
friend. But, face to face with him, it became almost an impossibility.
It was impossible even to put it into words. The mere ideas seemed to be
untranslatable, to savour of madness. I found myself in the very
position that she had occupied at the commencement of our relations:
that of having to explain--say, to a Persian--the working principles of
the telegraph. And I was not equal to the task. At the same time I had
to do something. I had to. It would be abominable to have to go through
life forever, alone with the consciousness of that sort of treachery of
silence. But how could I tell him even the comprehensibles? What kind of
sentence was I to open with? With pluckings of an apologetic string,
without prelude at all--or how? I grew conscious that there was need for
haste; he was looking behind him down the long white road for the
carriage that was to pick us up.

"My dear fellow...." I began. He must have noted a change in my tone,
and looked at me with suddenly lifted eyebrows. "You know my sister is
going to marry Mr. Gurnard."