CHAPTER XXIII.
"You foresee the course of the narrative ?" "Better tell it in detail," muttered Hilliard.
"Why this severe tone?
Do you anticipate something that will shock your moral sense?
I didn't think you were so straitlaced." "Do you mean to say----" Hilliard was sitting upright; his voice began on a harsh tremor, and suddenly failed.

The other gazed at him in humorous astonishment.
"What the devil do you mean?
Even suppose--who made you a judge and a ruler?
This is the most comical start I've known for a long time.

I was going to tell you that I have made up my mind to marry the girl." "I see--it's all right----" "But do you really mean," said Narramore, "that anything else would have aroused your moral indignation ?" Hilliard burst into a violent fit of laughter.

His pipe fell to the floor, and broke; whereupon he interrupted his strange merriment with a savage oath.
"It was a joke, then ?" remarked his friend.
"Your monstrous dulness shows the state of your mind.

This is what comes of getting entangled with women.