The World of Chance by William Dean Howells

There was nothing for Ray to do but to accept his dismissal. He got / himself stealthily down stairs and out of the house, but he could not / leave it. He walked up and down before it, doubting whether he ought not / to ring and try to get in again. When he made up his mind to this he saw / that the front windows were dark. That decided him to go home.

He did not sleep, and the next morning he made an early errand to the / publishers'. He saw Peace bent over her work in Mr. Chapley's room. He / longed to go and speak to her, and assure himself from her own words / that all was well; but he had no right to do that, and with the first / stress of his anxiety abated, he went to lay the cause of it before / Kane.

"It was all a mere chance that I should know of this; but I thought you / ought to know," he explained.

"Yes, certainly," said Kane; but he was less moved than Ray had / expected, or else he showed his emotion less. "Hughes is not a fool, / whatever Denton is; this sort of thing must have been going on a good / while, and he's got the measure of it. I'll speak to Chapley about it. / They mustn't be left altogether to themselves with it."

As the days began to go by, and Ray saw Peace constantly in her place / at the publishers', his unselfish anxiety yielded to the question of his / own relation to her, and how he should make confession and reparation. / He went to Kane in this trouble, as in the other, after he had fought / off the necessity as long as he could, but they spoke of the other / trouble first.

Then Ray said, with the effort to say it casually, "I don't think I told / you that the great mystery about my manuscript had been solved. " Kane / could not remember at once what the mystery was, and Ray was forced to / add, "It seems that the unknown friend who wouldn't look twice at my / book was -- Miss Hughes."

Kane said, after a moment, "Oh! " and then, as if it should be a very / natural thing, he asked, "How did you find that out?"

"She got Mr. Brandreth to tell me it wasn't you, as soon as she knew / that I had suspected you."

"Of course. Did he tell you who it was?"

"He was to tell me if I wished. But I knew it couldn't be anybody but / she, if it were not you, and I went to see her about it."

"Well? " said Kane, with a kind of expectation in his look and voice that / made it hard for Ray to go on.

"Well, I played the fool. I pretended that I thought she had used me / badly. I don't know. I tried to make her think so."

"Did you succeed?"

"I succeeded in making her very unhappy."

"That was success -- of a kind," said Kane, and he lay back in his chair / looking into the fire, while Ray sat uncomfortably waiting at the other / corner of the hearth.

"Did she say why she wouldn't look at your manuscript a second time? " / Kane asked finally.

"Not directly."

"Did you ask?"

"Hardly!"

"You knew?"