Chilcote leaned forward. "How did you come by it?" he asked.

The other shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, that's ancient history."

"The results are present-day enough. It's very awkward! Very annoying!" Chilcote's spirits, at all times overeasily played upon, were damped by this obstacle.

Loder, still looking at his hand, didn't seem to hear. "There's only one thing to be done," he said. "Each wear two rings on the third finger of the left hand. Two rings ought to cover it." He made a speculative measurement with the stem of his pipe.

Chilcote still looked irritable and disturbed. "I detest rings. I never wear rings."

Loder raised his eyes calmly. "Neither do I," he said. "But there's no reason for bigotry."

But Chilcote's irritability was started. He pushed back his chair. "I don't like the idea," he said.

The other eyed him amusedly. "What a queer beggar you are!" he said. "You waive the danger of a man signing your checks and shy at wearing a piece of jewelry. I'll have a fair share of individuality to study."

Chilcote moved restlessly. "Everybody knows I detest jewelry."

"Everybody knows you are capricious. It's got to be the rings or nothing, so far as I make out."

Chilcote again altered his position, avoiding the other's eyes. At last, after a struggle with himself, he looked up.

"I suppose you're right!" he said. "Have it your own way." It was the first small, tangible concession to the stronger will.

Loder took his victory quietly. "Good!" he said. "Then it's all straight sailing?"

"Except for the matter of the—the remuneration." Chilcote hazarded the word uncertainly.

There was a faint pause, then Loder laughed brusquely. "My pay?"

The other was embarrassed. "I didn't want to put it quite like that."

"But that was what you thought. Why are you never honest —even with yourself?"

Chilcote drew his chair closer to the table. He did not attend to the other's remark, but his fingers strayed to his waistcoat pocket and fumbled there.

Loder saw the gesture. "Look here," he said, "you are overtaxing yourself. The affair of the pay isn't pressing; we'll shelve it to another night. You look tired out."

Chilcote lifted his eyes with a relieved glance. "Thanks. I do feel a bit fagged. If I may, I'll have that whiskey that I refused last night."

"Why, certainly." Loder rose at once and crossed to a cupboard in the wall. In silence he brought out whiskey, glasses, and a siphon of soda-water. "Say when!" he said, lifting the whiskey.

"Now. And I'll have plain water instead of soda, if it's all the same."

"Oh, quite." Loder recrossed the room. Instantly his back was turned, Chilcote drew a couple of tabloids from his pocket and dropped them into his glass. As the other came slowly back he laughed nervously.

"Thanks. See to your own drink now; I can manage this." He took the jug unceremoniously, and, carefully guarding his glass from the light, poured in the water with excited haste.

"What shall we drink to?" he said.

Loder methodically mixed his own drink and lifted the glass. "Oh, to the career of John Chilcote!" he answered.

For an instant the other hesitated. There was something prophetic in the sound of the toast. But he shook the feeling off and held up his glass.

"To the career of John Chilcote!" he said, with another unsteady laugh.



VII

It was a little less than three weeks since Chilcote and Loder had drunk their toast, and again Loder was seated at his desk.

His head was bent and his hand moved carefully as he traced line after line of meaningless words on a sheet of foolscap. Having covered the page with writing, he rose, moved to the centre-table, and compared his task with an open letter that lay there. The comparison seemed to please him; he straightened his shoulders and threw back his head in an attitude of critical satisfaction. So absorbed was he that, when a step sounded on the stairs outside, he did not notice it, and only raised his head when the door was thrown open unceremoniously. Even then his interest was momentary.

"Hullo!" he said, his eyes returning to their scrutiny of his task.

Chilcote shut the door and came hastily across the room. He looked ill and harassed. As he reached Loder he put out his hand nervously and touched his arm.

Loder looked up. "What is it?" he asked. "Any new development?"

Chilcote tried to smile. "Yes," he said, huskily; "it's come."

Loder freed his arm. "What? The end of the world?"

"No. The end of me." The words came jerkily, the strain that had enforced them showing in every syllable.

Still Loder was uncomprehending; he could not, or would not, understand.

Again Chilcote caught and jerked at his sleeve. "Don't you see? Can't you see?"

"No."

Chilcote dropped the sleeve and passed his handkerchief across his forehead. "It's come," he repeated. "Don't you understand? I want you." He drew away, then stepped back again anxiously. "I know I'm taking you unawares," he said. "But it's not my fault. On my soul, it's not! The thing seems to spring at me and grip me—" He stopped, sinking weakly into a chair.

For a moment Loder stood erect and immovable—then, almost with reluctance, his glance turned to the figure beside him.

"You want me to take your place to-night—without preparation?" His voice was distinct and firm, but it was free from contempt.

"Yes; yes, I do." Chilcote spoke without looking up.

"That you may spend the night in morphia—this and other nights?"

Chilcote lifted a flushed, unsettled face. "You have no right to preach. You accepted the bargain."

Loder raised his head quickly. "I never—" he began; then both his face and voice altered. "You are quite right," he said, coldly. "You won't have to complain again."

Chilcote stirred uncomfortably. "My dear chap," he said, "I meant no offence. It's merely—"

"Your nerves. I know. But come to business. What am I to do?"

Chilcote rose excitedly. "Yes, business. Let's come to business. It's rough on you, taking you short like this. But you have an erratic person to deal with. I've had a horrible day—a horrible day." His face had paled again, and in the green lamplight it possessed a grayish hue. Involuntarily Loder turned away.

Chilcote watched him as he passed to the desk and began mechanically sorting papers. "A horrible day!" he repeated. "So bad that I daren't face the night. You have read De Quincey?" he asked, with a sudden change of tone.

"Yes."

"Then read him again and you'll understand. I have all the horrors—without any art. I have no 'Ladies of Sorrow,' but I have worse monsters than his 'crocodile'." He laughed unpleasantly.

Loder turned. "Why in the devil's name—" he began; then again he halted. Something in Chilcote's drawn, excited face checked him. The strange sense of predestination that we sometimes see in the eyes of another struck cold upon him, chilling his last attempt at remonstrance. "What do you want me to do?" he substituted, in an ordinary voice.

The words steadied Chilcote. He laughed a little. The laugh was still shaky, but it was pitched in a lower key.

"You—you're quite right to pull me up. We have no time to waste. It must be one o'clock." He pulled out his watch, then walked to the window and stood looking down into the shadowy court. "How quiet you are here!" he said. Then abruptly anew thought struck him and he wheeled back into the room. "Loder," he said, quickly—-"Loder, I have an idea! While you are me, why shouldn't I be you? Why shouldn't I be John Loder instead of the vagrant we contemplated? It covers everything—it explains everything. It's magnificent! I'm amazed we never thought of it before."

Loder was still beside the desk. "I thought of it," he said, without looking back.

"And didn't suggest it?"

"No."

"Why?"

Loder said nothing and the other colored.

"Jealous of your reputation?" he said, satirically.

"I have none to be jealous of."

Chilcote laughed disagreeably. "Then you aren't so for gone in philosophy as I thought. You have a niche in your own good opinion."

Again Loder was silent; then he smiled. "You have an oddly correct perception at times," he said. "I suppose I have had a lame sort of pride in keeping my name clean. But pride like that is out of fashion—and I've got to float with the tide." He laughed, the short laugh that Chilcote had heard once or twice before, and, crossing the room, he stood beside his visitor. "After all," he said, "what business have I with pride, straight or lame? Have my identity, if you want it. When all defences have been broken down one barrier won't save the town." Laughing again, he laid his hand on the other's arm. "Come," he said, "give your orders. I capitulate."

An hour later the two men passed from Loder's bed room, where the final arrangements had been completed, back into the sitting-room. Loder came first, in faultless evening-dress. His hair was carefully brushed, the clothes he wore fitted him perfectly. To any glance, critical or casual, he was the man who had mounted the stairs and entered the rooms earlier in the evening. Chilcote's manner of walking and poise of the head seemed to have descended upon him with Chilcote's clothes. He came into the room hastily and passed to the desk.

"I have no private papers," he said, "so I have nothing to lock up. Everything can stand as it is. A woman named Robins comes in the mornings to clean up and light the fire; otherwise you must shift for yourself. Nobody will disturb you. Quiet, dead quiet, is about the one thing you can count on."

Chilcote, half halting in the doorway, made an attempt to laugh. Of the two, he was noticeably the more embarrassed. In Loder's well-worn, well-brushed tweed suit he felt stranded on his own personality, bereft for the moment of the familiar accessories that helped to cloak deficiencies and keep the wheel of conventionality comfortably rolling. He stood unpleasantly conscious of himself, unable to shape his sensations even in thought. He glanced at the fire, at the table, finally at the chair on which he had thrown his overcoat before entering the bedroom. At the sight of the coat his gaze brightened, the aimlessness forsook him, and he gave an exclamation of relief.

"By Jove!" he said. "I clean forgot."

"What?" Loder looked round.

"The rings." He crossed to the coat and thrust his hand into the pocket. "The duplicates only arrived this afternoon. The nick of time, eh?" He spoke fast, his fingers searching busily. Occupation of any kind came as a boon.

Loder slowly followed him, and as the box was brought to light he leaned forward interestedly.

"As I told you, one is the copy of an old signet-ring, the other a plain band—a plain gold band like a wedding-ring." Chilcote laughed as he placed the four rings side by side on his palm. "I could think of nothing else that would be wide —and not ostentatious. You know how I detest display."

Loder touched the rings. "You have good taste," he said. "Let's see if they serve their purpose?" He picked them up and carried them to the lamp.

Chilcote followed him. "That was an ugly wound," he said, his curiosity reawakening as Loder extended his finger. "How did you come by it?"

The other smiled. "It's a memento," he said.

"Of bravery?"

"No. Quite the reverse." He looked again at his hand, then glanced back at Chilcote. "No," he repeated, with an unusual impulse of confidence. "It serves to remind me that I am not exempt—that I have been fooled like other men."

"That implies a woman?"

"Yes." Again Loder looked at the scar on his finger. "I seldom recall the thing, it's so absolutely past. But I rather like to remember it to-night. I rather want you to know that I've been through the fire. It's a sort of guarantee."

Chilcote made a hasty gesture, but the other interrupted it.

"Oh, I know you trust me. But you're giving me a risky post. I want you to see that women are out of my line—quite out of it."

"But, my dear chap—"

Loder went on without heeding. "This thing happened eight years ago at Santasalare," he said, "a little place between Luna and Pistoria—a mere handful of houses wedged between two hills. A regular relic of old Italy crumbling away under flowers and sunshine, with nothing to suggest the present century except the occasional passing of a train round the base of one of the hills. I had literally stumbled upon the place on a long tramp south from Switzerland, and had been tempted into a stay at the little inn. The night after my arrival something unusual occurred. There was an accident to the train at the point where it skirted the village.

"There was a small excitement; all the inhabitants were anxious to help, and I took my share. As a matter of fact, the smash was not disastrous; the passengers were hurt and frightened, but nobody was killed."

He paused and looked at his companion, but, seeing him interested, went on:

"Among these passengers was an English lady. Of all concerned in the business, she was the least upset. When I came upon her she was sitting on the shattered door of one of the carriages, calmly rearranging her hat. On seeing me she looked up with the most charming smile imaginable.

"'I have just been waiting for somebody like you,' she said. 'My stupid maid has got herself smashed up somewhere in the second-class carriages, and I have nobody to help me to find my dog.'

"Of course, that first speech ought to have enlightened me, but it didn't. I only saw the smile and heard the voice; I knew nothing of whether they were deep or shallow. So I found the maid and found the dog. The first expressed gratitude; the other didn't. I extricated him with enormous difficulty from the wreck of the luggage-van, and this was how he marked his appreciation." He held out his hand and nodded towards the scar.

Chilcote glanced up. "So that's the explanation?"

"Yes. I tried to conceal the thing when I restored the dog, but I was bleeding abominably and I failed. Then the whole business was changed. It was I who needed seeing to, my new friend insisted; I who should be looked after, and not she. She forgot the dog in the newer interest of my wounded finger. The maid, who was practically unhurt, was sent on to engage rooms at the little inn, and she and I followed slowly.

"That walk impressed me. There was an attractive mistiness of atmosphere in the warm night, a sensation more than attractive in being made much of by a woman of one's own class and country after five years' wandering." He laughed with a touch of irony. "But I won't take up your time with details. You know the progress of an ordinary love affair. Throw in a few more flowers and a little more sunshine than is usual, a man who is practically a hermit and a woman who knows the world by heart, and you have the whole thing.

"She insisted on staying in Santasalare for three days in order to keep my finger bandaged; she ended by staying three weeks in the hope of smashing up my life.

"On coming to the hotel she had given no name; and in our first explanations to each other she led me to conclude her an unmarried girl. It was at the end of the three weeks that I learned that she was not a free agent, as I had innocently imagined, but possessed a husband whom she had left ill with malaria at Florence or Rome.

"The news disconcerted me, and I took no pains to hide it. After that the end came abruptly. In her eyes I had become a fool with middle-class principles; in my eyes—But there is no need for that. She left Santasalare the same night in a great confusion of trunks and hat-boxes; and next morning I strapped on my knapsack and turned my face to the south."

"And women don't count ever after?" Chilcote smiled, beguiled out of himself.

Loder laughed. "That's what I've been trying to convey. Once bitten, twice shy!" He laughed again and slipped the two rings over his finger with an air of finality.

"Now, shall I start? This is the latch-key?" He drew a key from the pocket of Chilcote's evening-clothes. "When I get to Grosvenor Square I am to find your house, go straight in, mount the stairs, and there on my right hand will be the door of your—I mean my own—private rooms. I think I've got it all by heart. I feel inspired; I feel that I can't go wrong." He handed the two remaining rings to Chilcote and picked up the overcoat.

"I'll stick on till I get a wire—," he said. "Then I'll come back and we'll reverse again." He slipped on the coat and moved back towards the table. Now that the decisive moment had come, it embarrassed him.

Scarcely knowing how to bring it to an end, he held out his hand.

Chilcote took it, paling a little. "'Twill be all right!" he said, with a sudden return of nervousness. "'Twill be all right! And I've made it plain about—about the remuneration? A hundred a week—besides all expenses."

Loder smiled again. "My pay? Oh yes, you've made it clear as day. Shall we say good-night now?"

"Yes. Good-night."

There was a strange, distant note in Chilcote's voice, but the other did not pretend to hear it. He pressed the hand he was holding, though the cold dampness of it repelled him.

"Good-night," he said again.

"Good-night."

They stood for a moment, awkwardly looking at each other, then Loder quietly disengaged his hand, crossed the room, and passed through the door.

Chilcote, left standing alone in the middle of the room, listened while the last sound of the other's footsteps was audible on the uncarpeted stairs; then, with a furtive, hurried gesture, he caught up the green-shaded lamp and passed into Loder's bedroom.



VIII

To all men come portentous moments, difficult moments, triumphant moments. Loder had had his examples of all three, but no moment in his career ever equalled in strangeness of sensation that in which, dressed in another man's clothes, he fitted the latchkey for the first time into the door of the other man's house.

The act was quietly done. The key fitted the lock smoothly and his fingers turned it without hesitation, though his heart, usually extremely steady, beat sharply for a second. The hall loomed massive and sombre despite the modernity of electric lights. It was darkly and expensively decorated in black and brown; a frieze of wrought bronze, representing peacocks with outspread tails, ornamented the walls; the banisters were of heavy iron-work, and the somewhat formidable fireplace was of the same dark metal.

Loder looked about him, then advanced, his heart again beating quickly as his hand touched the cold banister and he began his ascent of the stairs. But at each step his confidence strengthened, his feet became more firm; until, at the head of the stairs, as if to disprove his assurance, his pulses played him false once more, this time to a more serious tune. From the farther end of a well-lighted corridor a maid was coming straight in his direction.

For one short second all things seemed to whiz about him; the certainty of detection overpowered his mind. The indisputable knowledge that he was John Loder and no other, despite all armor of effrontery and dress, so dominated him that all other considerations shrank before it. It wanted but one word, one simple word of denunciation, and the whole scheme was shattered. In the dismay of the moment, he almost wished that the word might be spoken and the suspense ended.

But the maid came on in silence, and so incredible was the silence that Loder moved onward, too. He came within a yard of her, and still she did not speak; then, as he passed her, she drew back respectfully against the wall.

The strain, so astonishingly short, had been immense, but with its slackening came a strong reaction. The expected humiliation seethed suddenly to a desire to dare fate. Pausing quickly, he turned and called the woman back.

The spot where he had halted was vividly bright, the ceiling light being directly above his head; and as she came towards him he raised his face deliberately and-waited.

She looked at him without surprise or interest. "Yes, sir?" she said.

"Is your mistress in?" he asked. He could think of no other question, but it served his purpose as a test of his voice.

Still the woman showed no surprise. "She's not in sir," she answered. "But she's expected in half an hour."

"In half an hour? All right! That's all I wanted." With a movement of decision Loder walked back to the stair-head, turned to the right, and opened the door of Chilcote's rooms.

The door opened on a short, wide passage; on one side stood the study, on the other the bed, bath, and dressing-rooms. With a blind sense of knowledge and unfamiliarity, bred of much description on Chilcote's part, he put his hand on the study door and, still exalted by the omen of his first success, turned the handle.

Inside the room there was firelight and lamplight and a studious air of peace. The realization of this and a slow incredulity at Chilcote's voluntary renunciation were his first impressions; then his attention was needed for more imminent things.

As he entered, the new secretary was returning a volume to its place on the book-shelves. At sight of him, he pushed it hastily into position and turned round.

"I was making a few notes on the political position of Khorasan," he said, glancing with slight apprehensiveness at the other's face. He was a small, shy man, with few social attainments but an extraordinary amount of learning—the antithesis of the alert Blessington, whom he had replaced.

Loder bore his scrutiny without flinching. Indeed, it struck him suddenly that there was a fund of interest, almost of excitement, in the encountering of each new pair of eyes. At the thought he moved forward to the desk.

"Thank you, Greening," he said. "A very useful bit of work."

The secretary glanced up, slightly puzzled. His endurance had been severely taxed in the fourteen days that he had filled his new post.

"I'm glad you think so, sir," he said, hesitatingly. "You rather pooh-poohed the matter this morning, if you remember."

Loder was taking off his coat, but stopped in the operation.

"This morning?" he said. "Oh, did I? Did I?" Then, struck by the opportunity the words gave him, he turned towards the secretary. "You've got to get used to me, Greening," he said. "You haven't quite grasped me yet, I can see. I'm a man of moods, you know. Up to the present you've seen my slack side, my jarred side, but I have quite another when I care to show it. I'm a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde affair." Again he laughed, and Greening echoed the sound diffidently. Chilcote had evidently discouraged familiarity.

Loder eyed him with abrupt understanding. He recognized the loneliness in the anxious, conciliatory manner.

"You're tired," he said, kindly. "Go to bed. I've got some thinking to do. Good-night." He held out his hand.

Greening took it, still half distrustful of this fresh side to so complex a man.

"Good-night, sir," he said. "To-morrow, if you approve, I shall go on with my notes. I hope you will have a restful night."

For a second Loder's eyebrows went up, but he recovered himself instantly.

"Ah, thanks, Greening," he said. "Thanks. I think your hope will be fulfilled."

He watched the little secretary move softly and apologetically to the door; then he walked to the fire, and, resting his elbows on the mantel-piece, he took his face in his hands.

For a space he stood absolutely quiet, then his hands dropped to his sides and he turned slowly round. In that short space he had balanced things and found his bearings. The slight nervousness shown in his brusque sentences and overconfident manner faded out, and he faced facts steadily.

With the return of his calmness he took a long survey of the room. His glance brightened appreciatively as it travelled from the walls lined with well-bound books to the lamps modulated to the proper light; from the lamps to the desk fitted with every requirement. Nothing was lacking. All he had once possessed, all he had since dreamed of, was here, but on a greater scale. To enjoy the luxuries of life a man must go long without them. Loder had lived severely—so severely that until three weeks ago he had believed bimself exempt from the temptations of humanity. Then the voice of the world had spoken, and within him another voice had answered, with a tone so clamorous and insistent that it had outcried his surprised and incredulous wonder at its existence and its claims. That had been the voice of suppressed ambition; and now as he stood in the new atmosphere a newer voice lifted itself. The joy of material things rose suddenly, overbalancing the last remnant of the philosophy he had reared. He saw all things in a fresh light—the soft carpets, the soft lights, the numberless pleasant, unnecessary things that color the passing landscape and oil the wheels of life. This was power—power made manifest. The choice bindings of one's books, the quiet harmony of one's surroundings, the gratifying deference of one's dependants—these were the visible, the outward signs, the things he had forgotten.

Crossing the room slowly, he lifted and looked at the different papers on the desk. They had a substantial feeling, an importance, an air of value. They were like the solemn keys to so many vexed problems. Beside the papers were a heap of letters neatly arranged and as yet unopened. He turned them over one by one. They were all thick, and interesting to look at. He smiled as he recalled his own scanty mail: envelopes long and bulky or narrow and thin—unwelcome manuscripts or very welcome checks. Having sorted the letters, he hesitated. It was his task to open them, but he had never in his life opened an envelope addressed to another man.

He stood uncertain, weighing them in his hand.

Then all at once a look of attention and surprise crossed his face, and he raised his head. Some one had unmistakably paused outside the door which Greening had left ajar.

There was a moment of apparent doubt, then a stir of skirts, a quick, uncertain knock, and the intruder entered.

For a couple of seconds she stood in the doorway; then, as Loder made no effort to speak, she moved into the room. She had apparently but just returned from some entertainment, for, though she had drawn off her long gloves, she was still wearing an evening cloak of lace and fur.

That she was Chilcote's wife Loder instinctively realized the moment she entered the room. But a disconcerting confusion of ideas was all that followed the knowledge. He stood by the desk, silent and awkward, trying to fit his expectations to his knowledge. Then, faced by the hopelessness of the task, he turned abruptly and looked at her again.

She had taken off her cloak and was standing by the fire. The compulsion of moving through life alone had set its seal upon her in a certain self-possession, a certain confidence of pose; yet her figure, as Loder then saw it, backgrounded by the dark books and gowned in pale blue, had a suggestion of youthfulness that seemed a contradiction. The remembrance of Chilcote's epithets "cold" and "unsympathetic" came back to him with something like astonishment. He felt no uncertainty, no dread of discovery and humiliation in her presence as he had felt in the maid's; yet there was something in her face that made him infinitely more uncomfortable. A look he could find no name for—a friendliness that studiously covered another feeling, whether question, distrust, or actual dislike he could not say. With a strange sensation of awkwardness he sorted Chilcote's letters, waiting for her to speak.

As if divining his thought, she turned towards him. "I'm afraid I rather intrude," she said. "If you are busy—"

His sense of courtesy was touched; he had begun life with a high opinion of women, and the words shook up an echo of the old sentiment.

"Don't think that," he said, hastily. "I was only looking through—my letters. You mustn't rate yourself below letters." He was conscious that his tone was hurried, that his words were a little jagged; but Eve did not appear to notice. Unlike Greening, she took the new manner without surprise. She had known Chilcote for six years.

"I dined with the Fraides to-night," she said. "Mr. Fraide sent you a message."

Unconsciously Loder smiled. There was humor in the thought of a message to him from the great Fraide. To hide his amusement he wheeled one of the big lounge-chairs forward.

"Indeed," he said. "Won't you sit down?"

They were near together now, and he saw her face more fully. Again he was taken aback. Chilcote had spoken of her as successful and intelligent, but never as beautiful. Yet her beauty was a rare and uncommon fact. Her hair was black —not a glossy black, but the dusky black that is softer than any brown; her eyes were large and of a peculiarly pure blue; and her eyelashes were black, beautifully curved and of remarkable thickness.

"Won't you sit down?" he said again, cutting short his thoughts with some confusion.

"Thank you." She gravely accepted the proffered chair. But he saw that without any ostentation she drew her skirts aside as she passed him. The action displeased him unaccountably.

"Well," he said, shortly, "what had Fraide to say?" He walked to the mantel-piece with his customary movement and stood watching her. The instinct towards hiding his face had left him. Her instant and uninterested acceptance of him almost nettled him; his own half-contemptuous impression of Chilcote came to him unpleasantly, and with it the first desire to assert his own individuality. Stung by the conflicting emotions, he felt in Chilcote's pockets for something to smoke.

Eve saw and interpreted the action. "Are these your cigarettes?" She leaned towards a small table and took up a box made of lizard-skin.

"Thanks." He took the box from her, and as it passed from one to the other he saw her glance at his rings. The glance was momentary; her lips parted to express question or surprise, then closed again without comment. More than any spoken words, the incident showed him the gulf that separated husband and wife.

"Well?" he said again, "what about Fraide?"

At his words she sat straighter and looked at him more directly, as if bracing herself to a task.

"Mr. Fraide is—is as interested as ever in you," she began.

"Or in you?" Loder made the interruption precisely as he felt Chilcote would have made it. Then instantly he wished the words back.

Eve's warm skin colored more deeply; for a second the inscrutable underlying expression that puzzled him showed in her eyes, then she sank back into a corner of the chair.

"Why do you make such a point of sneering at my friends?" she asked, quietly. "I overlook it when you are nervous." She halted slightly on the word. "But you are not nervous tonight."

Loder, to his great humiliation, reddened. Except for an occasional outburst on the part of Mrs. Robins, his charwoman, he had not merited a woman's displeasure for years.

"The sneer was unintentional," he said.

For the first time Eve showed a personal interest. She looked at him in a puzzled way. "If your apology was meant," she said, hesitatingly, "I should be glad to accept it."

Loder, uncertain of how to take the words, moved back to the desk. He carried an unlighted cigarette between his fingers.

There was an interval in which neither spoke. Then, at last, conscious of its awkwardness, Eve rose. With one hand on the back of her chair, she looked at him.

"Mr. Fraide thinks it's such a pity that"—she stopped to choose her words—"that you should lose hold on things—lose interest in things, as you are doing. He has been thinking a good deal about you in the last three weeks—ever since the day of your—your illness in the House; and it seems to him," —again she broke off, watching Loder's averted head—"it seems to him that if you made one real effort now, even now, to shake off your restlessness, that your—your health might improve. He thinks that the present crisis would be"—she hesitated—" would give you a tremendous opportunity. Your trade interests, bound up as they are with Persia, would give any opinion you might hold a double weight." Almost unconsciously a touch of warmth crept into her words.

"Mr. Fraide talked very seriously about the beginning of your career. He said that if only the spirit of your first days could come back—" Her tone grew quicker, as though she feared ridicule in Loder's silence. "He asked me to use my influence. I know that I have little—none, perhaps—but I couldn't tell him that, and so—so I promised."

"And have kept the promise?" Loder spoke at random. Her manner and her words had both affected him. There was a sensation of unreality in his brain.

"Yes," she answered. "I always want to do—what I can."

As she spoke a sudden realization of the effort she was making struck upon him, and with it his scorn of Chilcote rose in renewed force.

"My intention—" he began, turning to her. Then the futility of any declaration silenced him. "I shall think over what you say," he added, after a minute's wait. "I suppose I can't say more than that."

Their eyes met and she smiled a little.

"I don't believe I expected as much," she said. "I think I'll go now. You have been wonderfully patient." Again she smiled slightly, at the same time extending her hand. The gesture was quite friendly, but in Loder's eyes it held relief as well as friendliness; and when their hands met he noticed that her fingers barely brushed his.

He picked up her cloak and carried it across the room. As he held the door open, he laid it quietly across her arm.

"I'll think over what you've said," he repeated.

Again she glanced at him as if suspecting sarcasm then, partly reassured, she paused. "You will always despise your opportunities, and I suppose I shall always envy them," she said. "That's the way with men and women. Good-night!" With another faint smile she passed out into the corridor.

Loder waited until he heard the outer door close, then he crossed the room thoughtfully and dropped into the chair that she had vacated. He sat for a time looking at the hand her fingers had touched; then he lifted his head with a characteristic movement.

"By Jove!" he said, aloud, "how cordially she detests tests him!"



IX

Loder slept soundly and dreamlessly in Chilcote's canopied bed. To him the big room with its severe magnificence suggested nothing of the gloom and solitude that it held in its owner's eyes. The ponderous furniture, the high ceiling, the heavy curtains, unchanged since the days of Chilcote's grandfather, all hinted at a far-reaching ownership that stirred him. The ownership was mythical in his regard, and the possessions a mirage, but they filled the day. And, surely, sufficient for the day—

That was his frame of mind as he opened his eyes on the following morning, and lay appreciative of his comfort, of the surrounding space, even of the light that filtered through the curtain chinks, suggestive of a world recreated. With day, all things seem possible to a healthy man. He stretched his arms luxuriously, delighting in the glossy smoothness of the sheets.

What was it Chilcote had said? Better live for a day than exist for a lifetime! That was true; and life had begun. At thirty-six he was to know it for the first time.

He smiled, but without irony. Man is at his best at thirty-six, he mused. He has retained his enthusiasms and shed his exuberances; he has learned what to pick up and what to pass by; he no longer imagines that to drain a cup one must taste the dregs. He closed his eyes and stretched again, not his arms only, but his whole body. The pleasure of his mental state insisted on a physical expression. Then, sitting up in bed, he pressed the electric bell.

Chilcote's new valet responded.

"Pull those curtains, Renwick!" he said. "What's the time?" He had passed the ordeal of Renwick's eyes the night before.

The man was slow, even a little stupid. He drew back the curtains carefully, then looked at the small clock on the dressing-table. "Eight o'clock, sir. I didn't expect the bell so early, sir."

Loder felt reproved, and a pause followed.

"May I bring your cup of tea, sir?"

"No. Not just yet. I'll have a bath first."

Renwick showed ponderous uncertainty. "Warm, sir?" he hazarded.

"No. Cold."

Still perplexed, the man left the room.

Loder smiled to himself. The chances of discovery in that quarter were not large. He was inclined to think that Chilcote had even overstepped necessity in the matter of his valet's dullness.

He breakfasted alone, following Chilcote's habit, and after breakfast found his way to the study.

As he entered, Greening rose with the same conciliatory haste that he had shown the night before.

Loder nodded to him. "Early at work?" he said, pleasantly.

The little man showed instant, almost ridiculous relief. "Good-morning, sir," he said; "you too are early. I rather feared your nerves troubled you after I left last night, for I found your letters still unopened this morning. But I am glad to see you look so well."

Loder promptly turned his back to the light. "Oh, last night's letters!" he said. "To tell you the truth, Greening, my wife"—his hesitation was very slight—"my wife looked me up after you left, and we gossiped. I clean forgot the post." He smiled in an explanatory way as he moved to the desk and picked up the letters.

With Greening's eyes upon him, there was no time for scruples. With very creditable coolness he began opening the envelopes one by one. The letters were unimportant, and he passed them one after another to the secretary, experiencing a slight thrill of authority as each left his hand. Again the fact that power is visible in little things came to his mind.

"Give me my engagement-book, Greening," he said, when the letters had been disposed of.

The book that Greening handed him was neat in shape and bound, like Chilcote's cigarette-case, in lizard-skin.

As Loder took it, the gold monogram "J.C." winked at him in the bright morning light. The incident moved his sense of humor. He and the book were cooperators in the fraud, it seemed. He felt an inclination to wink back. Nevertheless, he opened it with proper gravity and skimmed the pages.

The page devoted to the day was almost full. On every other line were jottings in Chilcote's irregular hand, and twice among the entries appeared a prominent cross in blue pencilling. Loder's interest quickened as his eye caught the mark. It had been agreed between them that only engagements essential to Chilcote's public life need be carried through during his absence, and these, to save confusion, were to be crossed in blue pencil. The rest, for the most part social claims, were to be left to circumstance and Loder's inclination, Chilcote's erratic memory always accounting for the breaking of trivial promises.

But Loder in his new energy was anxious for obligations; the desire for fresh and greater tests grew with indulgence. He scanned the two lines with eagerness. The first was an interview with Cresham, one of Chilcote's supporters in Wark; the other an engagement to lunch with Fraide. At the idea of the former his interest quickened, but at thought of the latter it quailed momentarily. Had the entry been a royal command it would have affected him infinitely less. For a space his assurance faltered; then, by coincidence, the recollection of Eve and Eve's words of last night came back to him, and his mind was filled with a new sensation.

Because of Chilcote, he was despised by Chilcote's wife! There was no denying that in all the pleasant excitement of the adventure that knowledge had rankled. It came to him now linked with remembrance of the slight, reluctant touch of her fingers, the faintly evasive dislike underlying her glance. It was a trivial thing, but it touched his pride as a man. That was how he put it to himself. It wasn't that he valued this woman's opinion—any woman's opinion; it was merely that it touched his pride. He turned again to the window and gazed out, the engagement book still between his hands. What if he compelled her respect? What if by his own personality cloaked under Chilcote's identity he forced her to admit his capability? It was a matter of pride, after all—scarcely even of pride; self-respect was a better word.

Satisfied by his own reasoning, he turned back into the room.

"See to those letters, Greening," he said. "And for the rest of the morning's work you might go on with your Khorasan notes. I believe we'll all want every inch of knowledge we can get in that quarter before we're much older. I'll see you again later." With a reassuring nod he crossed the room and passed through the door.

He lunched with Fraide at his club, and afterwards walked with him to Westminster. The walk and lunch were both memorable. In that hour he learned many things that had been sealed to him before. He tasted his first draught of real elation, his first drop of real discomfiture. He saw for the first time how a great man may condescend—how unostentatiously, how fully, how delightfully. He felt what tact and kindness perfectly combined may accomplish, and he burned inwardly with a sense of duplicity that crushed and elated him alternately. He was John Loder, friendless, penniless, with no present and no future, yet he walked down Whitehall in the full light of day with one of the greatest statesmen England has known.

Some strangers were being shown over the Terrace when he and Fraide reached the House, and, noticing the open door, the old man paused.

"I never refuse fresh air," he said. "Shall we take another breath of it before settling down?" He took Loder's arm and drew him forward. As they passed through the door-way the pressure of his fingers tightened. "I shall reckon to-day among my pleasantest memories, Chilcote," he said, gravely. "I can't explain the feeling, but I seem to have touched Eve's husband—the real you, more closely this morning than I ever did before. It has been a genuine happiness." He looked up with the eyes that, through all his years of action and responsibility, had remained so bright.

But Loder paled suddenly, and his glance turned to the river-wide, mysterious, secret. Unconsciously Fraide had stripped the illusion. It was not John Loder who walked here; it was Chilcote—Chilcote with his position, his constituency —his wife. He half extricated his arm, but Fraide held it.

"No," he said. "Don't draw away from me. You have always been too ready to do that. It is not often I have a pleasant truth to tell. I won't be deprived of the enjoyment."

"Can the truth ever be pleasant, sir?" Involuntarily Loder echoed Chilcote.

Fraide looked up. He was half a head shorter than his companion, though his dignity concealed the fact. "Chilcote," he said, seriously, "give up cynicism! It is the trade-mark of failure, and I do not like it in my friends."

Loder said nothing. The quiet insight of the reproof, its mitigating kindness, touched him sharply. In that moment he saw the rails down which he had sent his little car of existence spinning, and the sight daunted him. The track was steeper, the gauge narrower, than he had guessed; there were curves and sidings upon which he had not reckoned. He turned his head and met Fraide's glance.

"Don't count too much on me, sir," he said, slowly. "I might disappoint you again." His voice broke off on the last word, for the sound of other voices and of laughter came to them across the Terrace as a group of two women and three men passed through the open door. At a glance he realized that the slighter of the two women was Eve.

Seeing them, she disengaged herself from her party and came quickly forward. He saw her cheeks flush and her eyes brighten pleasantly as they rested on his companion; but he noticed also that after her first cursory glance she avoided his own direction.

As she came towards them, Fraide drew away his hand in readiness to greet her.

"Here comes my godchild!" he said. "I often wish, Chilcote, that I could do away with the prefix." He added the last words in an undertone as he reached them; then he responded warmly to her smile.

"What!" he said. "Turning the Terrace into the Garden of Eden in January! We cannot allow this."

Eve laughed. "Blame Lady Sarah!" she said. "We met at lunch, and she carried me off. Needless to say I hadn't to ask where."

They both laughed, and Loder joined, a little uncertainly. He had yet to learn that the devotion of Fraide and his wife was a long-standing jest in their particular set.

At the sound of his tardy laugh Eve turned to him. "I hope I didn't rob you of all sleep last night," she said. "I caught him in his den," she explained, turning to Fraide, "and invaded it most courageously. I believe we talked till two."

Again Loder noticed bow quickly she looked from him to Fraide. The knowledge roused his self-assertion.

"I had an excellent night," he said. "Do I look as if I hadn't slept?"

Somewhat slowly and reluctantly Eve looked back. "No," she said, truthfully, and with a faint surprise that to Loder seemed the first genuine emotion she had shown regarding him. "No, I don't think I ever saw you look so well." She was quite unconscious and very charming as she made the admission. It struck Loder that her coloring of hair and eyes gained by daylight—were brightened and vivified by their setting of sombre river and sombre stone.

Fraide smiled at her affectionately; then looked at Loder. "Chilcote has got anew lease of nerves, Eve," he said, quietly. "And I—believe—I have got a new henchman. But I see my wife beckoning to me. I must have a word with her before she flits away. May I be excused?" He made a courteous gesture of apology; then smiled at Eve.

She looked after him as he moved away. "I sometimes wonder what I should do if anything were to happen to the Fraides," she said, a little wistfully. Then almost at once she laughed, as if regretting her impulsiveness. "You heard what he said," she went on, in a different voice. "Am I really to congratulate you?"

The change of tone stung Loder unaccountably. "Will you always disbelieve in me?" he asked.

Without answering, she walked slowly across the deserted Terrace and, pausing by the parapet, laid her hand on the stonework. Still in silence she looked out across the river.

Loder had followed closely. Again her aloofness seemed a challenge. "Will you always disbelieve in me?" he repeated.

At last she looked up at him, slowly.

"Have you ever given me cause to believe!" she asked, in a quiet voice.

To this truth he found no answer, though the subdued incredulity nettled him afresh.

Prompted to a further effort, he spoke again. "Patience is necessary with every person and every circumstance," he said. "We've all got to wait and see."

She did not lower her gaze as he spoke; and there seemed to him something disconcerting in the clear, candid blue of her eyes. With a sudden dread of her next words, he moved forward and laid his hand beside hers on the parapet.

"Patience is needed for every one," he repeated, quickly. "Sometimes a man is like a bit of wreckage; he drifts till some force stronger than himself gets in his way and stops him." He looked again at her face. He scarcely knew what he was saying; he only felt that he was a man in an egregiously false position, trying stupidly to justify himself. "Don't you believe that flotsam can sometimes be washed ashore?" he asked.

High above them Big Ben chimed the hour.

Eve raised her head. It almost seemed to him that he could see her answer trembling on her lips; then the voice of Lady Sarah Fraide came cheerfully from behind them.

"Eve!" she called. "Eve! We must fly. It's absolutely three o'clock!"



X

In the days that followed Fraide's marked adoption of him Loder behaved with a discretion that spoke well for his qualities. Many a man placed in the same responsible, and yet strangely irresponsible, position might have been excused if, for the time at least, he gave himself a loose rein. But Loder kept free of the temptation.

Like all other experiments, his showed unlooked-for features when put to a working test. Its expected difficulties smoothed themselves away, while others, scarcely anticipated, came into prominence. Most notable of all, the physical likeness between himself and Chilcote, the bedrock of the whole scheme, which had been counted upon to offer most danger, worked without a hitch. He stood literally amazed before the sweeping credulity that met him on every hand. Men who had known Chilcote from his youth, servants who had been in his employment for years, joined issue in the unquestioning acceptance. At times the ease of the deception bewildered him; there were moments when he realized that, should circumstances force him to a declaration of the truth, he would not be believed. Human nature prefers its own eyesight to the testimony of any man.

But in face of this astonishing success he steered a steady course. In the first exhilaration of Fraide's favor, in the first egotistical wish to break down Eve's scepticism, he might possibly have plunged into the vortex of action, let it be in what direction it might; but fortunately for himself, for Chilcote, and for their scheme, he was liable to strenuous second thoughts—those wise and necessary curbs that go further to the steadying of the universe than the universe guesses. Sitting in the quiet of the House, on the same day that he had spoken with Eve on the Terrace, he had weighed possibilities slowly and cautiously. Impressed to the full by the atmosphere of the place that in his eyes could never lack character, however dull its momentary business, however prosy the voice that filled it, he had sifted impulse from expedience, as only a man who has lived within himself can sift and distinguish. And at the close of that first day his programme bad been formed. There must be no rush, no headlong plunge, he had decided; things must work round. It was his first expedition into the new country, and it lay with fate to say whether it would be his last.

He had been leaning back in his seat, his eyes on the ministers opposite, his arms folded in imitation of Chilcote's most natural attitude, when this final speculation had come to him; and as it came his lips had tightened for a moment and his face become hard and cold. It is an unpleasant thing when a man first unconsciously reckons on the weakness of another, and the look that expresses the idea is not good to see. He had stirred uneasily; then his lips had closed again. He was tenacious by nature, and by nature intolerant of weakness. At the first suggestion of reckoning upon Chilcote's lapses, his mind had drawn back in disgust; but as the thought came again the disgust had lessened.

In a week—two weeks, perhaps—Chilcote would reclaim his place. Then would begin the routine of the affair. Chilcote, fresh from indulgence and freedom, would find his obligations a thousand times more irksome than before; he would struggle for a time; then—

A shadowy smile had touched Loder's lips as the idea formed itself.

Then would come the inevitable recall; then in earnest he might venture to put his hand to the plough. He never indulged in day-dreams, but something in the nature of a vision had flashed over his mind in that instant. He had seen himself standing in that same building, seen the rows of faces first bored, then hesitatingly transformed under his personal domination, under the one great power he knew himself to possess—the power of eloquence. The strength of the suggestion had been almost painful. Men who have attained self-repression are occasionally open to a perilous onrush of feeling. Believing that they know themselves, they walk boldly forward towards the high-road and the pitfall alike.

These had been Loder's disconnected ideas and speculations on the first day of his new life. At four o'clock on the ninth day he was pacing with quiet confidence up and down Chilcote's study, his mind pleasantly busy and his cigar comfortably alight, when he paused in, his walk and frowned, interrupted by the entrance of a servant.

The man came softly into the room, drew a small table towards the fire, and proceeded to lay an extremely fine and unserviceable-looking cloth.

Loder watched him in silence. He had grown to find silence a very useful commodity. To wait and let things develop was the attitude he oftenest assumed. But on this occasion he was perplexed. He had not rung for tea, and in any case a cup on a salver satisfied his wants. He looked critically at the fragile cloth.

Presently the servant departed, and solemnly reentered carrying a silver tray, with cups, a teapot, and cakes. Having adjusted them to his satisfaction, he turned to Loder.

"Mrs. Chilcote will be with you in five minutes, sir," he said.

He waited for some response, but Loder gave none. Again he had found the advantages of silence, but this time it was silence of a compulsory kind. He had nothing to say.

The man, finding him irresponsive, retired; and, left to himself, Loder stared at the array of feminine trifles; then, turning abruptly, he moved to the centre of the room.

Since the day they had talked on the Terrace, he had only seen Eve thrice, and always in the presence e others. Since the night of his first coming, she has not invaded his domain, and he wondered what this new departure might mean.

His thought of her had been less vivid in the last few days; for, though still using steady discretion, he had been drawn gradually nearer the fascinating whirlpool of new interests and new work. Shut his eyes as he might, there was no denying that this moment, so personally vital to him, was politically vital to the whole country; and that by a curious coincidence Chilcote's position well-nigh forced him to take an active interest in the situation. Again and again the suggestion had arisen that—should the smouldering fire in Persia break into a flame, Chilcote's commercial interests would facilitate, would practically compel, his standing in in the campaign against the government.

The little incident of the tea-table, recalling the social side of his obligations, had aroused the realization of greater things. As he stood meditatively in the middle of the room he saw suddenly how absorbed he had become in these greater things. How, in the swing of congenial interests, he had been borne insensibly forward—his capacities expanding, his intelligence asserting itself. He had so undeniably found his sphere that the idea of usurpation had receded gently as by natural laws, until his own personality had begun to color the day's work.

As this knowledge came, he wondered quickly if it held a solution of the present little comedy; if Eve had seen what others, he knew, had observed—that Chilcote was showing a grasp of things that he had not exhibited for years. Then, as a sound of skirts came softly down the corridor, he squared his shoulders with his habitual abrupt gesture and threw his cigar into the fire.

Eve entered the room much as she had done on her former visit, but with one difference. In passing Loder she quietly held out her hand.

He took it as quietly. "Why am I so honored?" he said.

She laughed a little and looked across at the fire. "How like a man! You always want to begin with reasons. Let's have tea first and explanations after." She moved forward towards the table, and he followed. As he did so, it struck him that her dress seemed in peculiar harmony with the day and the room, though beyond that he could not follow its details. As she paused beside the table he drew forward a chair with a faint touch of awkwardness.

She thanked him and sat down.

He watched her in silence as she poured out the tea, and the thought crossed his mind that it was incredibly long since he had seen a woman preside over a meal. The deftness of her fingers filled him with an unfamiliar, half-inquisitive wonder. So interesting was the sensation that, when she held his cup towards him, he didn't immediately see it.

"Don't you want any?" She smiled a little.

He started, embarrassed by his own tardiness. "I'm afraid I'm dull," he said. "I've been so—"

"So keen a worker in the last week?"

For a moment he felt relieved. Then, as a fresh silence fell, his sense of awkwardness returned. He sipped his tea and ate a biscuit. He found himself wishing, for almost the first time, for some of the small society talk that came so pleasantly to other men. He felt that the position was ridiculous. He glanced at Eve's averted head, and laid his empty cup upon the table.

Almost at once she turned, and their eyes met.

"John," she said, "do you guess at all why I wanted to have tea with you?"

He looked down at her. "No," he said, honestly and without embellishment.

The curtness of the answer might have displeased another woman. Eve seemed to take no offence.

"I had a talk with the Fraides to-day," she said "A long talk. Mr. Fraide said great things of you—things I wouldn't have believed from anybody but Mr. Fraide." She altered her position and looked from Loder's face back into the fire.

He took a step forward. "What things?" he said. He was almost ashamed of the sudden, inordinate satisfaction that welled up at her words.

"Oh, I mustn't tell you!" She laughed a little. "But you have surprised him." She paused, sipped her tea, then looked up again with a change of expression.

"John," she said, more seriously, "there is one point that sticks a little. Will this great change last?" Her voice was direct and even—wonderfully direct for a woman, Loder thought. It came to him with a certain force that beneath her remarkable charm might possibly lie a remarkable character. It was not a possibility that had occurred to him before, and it caused him to look at her a second time. In the new light he saw her beauty differently, and it interested him differently. Heretofore he had been inclined to class women under three heads—idols, amusements, or encumbrances; now it crossed his mind that a woman might possibly fill another place—the place of a companion.

"You are very sceptical," he said, still looking down at her.

She did not return his glance. "I think I have been made sceptical," she said.

As she spoke the image of Chilcote shot through his mind. Chilcote, irritable, vicious, unstable, and a quick compassion for this woman so inevitably shackled to him followed it.

Eve, unconscious of what was passing in his mind, went on with her subject.

"When we were married," she said, gently, "I had such a great interest in things, such a great belief in life. I had lived in politics, and I was marrying one of the coming men—everybody said you were one of the coming men—I scarcely felt there was anything left to ask for. You didn't make very ardent love," she smiled, "but I think I had forgotten about love. I wanted nothing so much as to be like Lady Sarah—married to a great man." She paused, then went on more hurriedly: "For a while things went right; then slowly things, went wrong. You got your—your nerves."

Loder changed his position with something of abruptness.

She misconstrued the action.

"Please don't think I want to be disagreeable," she said, hastily. "I don't. I'm only trying to make you understand why—why I lost heart."

"I think I know," Loder's voice broke in involuntarily. "Things got worse—then still worse. You found interference useless. At last you ceased to have a husband."

"Until a week ago." She glanced up quickly. Absorbed in her own feelings, she had seen nothing extraordinary in his words.

But at hers, Loder changed color.

"It's the most incredible thing in the world," she said. "It's quite incredible, and yet I can't deny it. Against all my reason, all my experience, all my inclination I seem to feel in the last week something of what I felt at first." She stopped with an embarrassed laugh. "It seems that, as if by magic, life has been picked up where I dropped it six years ago." Again she stopped and laughed.

Loder was keenly uncomfortable, but he could think of nothing to say.

"It seemed to begin that night I dined with the Fraides," she went on. "Mr. Fraide talked so wisely and so kindly about many things. He recalled all we had hoped for in you; and —and he blamed me a little." She paused and laid her cup aside. "He said that when people have made what they call their last effort, they should always make just one effort more. He promised that if I could once persuade you to take an interest in your work, he would do the rest. He said all that, and a thousand other kinder things—and I sat and listened. But all the time I thought of nothing but their uselessness. Before I left I promised to do my best —but my thought was still the same. It was stronger than ever when I forced myself to come up here—" She paused again, and glanced at Loder's averted head. "But I came, and then—as if by conquering myself I had compelled a reward, you seemed—you somehow seemed different. It sounds ridiculous, I know." Her voice was half amused, half deprecating. "It wasn't a difference in your face, though I knew directly that you were free from—nerves." Again she hesitated over the word. "It was a difference in yourself, in the things you said, more than in the way you said them." Once more she paused and laughed a little.

Loder's discomfort grew.

"But it didn't affect me then." She spoke more slowly. "I wouldn't admit it then. And the next day when we talked on the Terrace I still refused to admit it—though I felt it more strongly than before. But I have watched you since that day, and I know there is a change. Mr. Fraide feels the same, and he is never mistaken. I know it's only nine or ten days, but I've hardly seen you in the same mood for nine or ten hours in the last three years." She stopped, and the silence was expressive. It seemed to plead for confirmation of her instinct.

Still Loder could find no response.

After waiting for a moment, she leaned forward in her chair and looked up at him.

"John," she said, "is it going to last? That's what I came to ask. I don't want to believe till I'm sure; I don't want to risk a new disappointment." Loder felt the earnestness of her gaze, though he avoided meeting it.

"I couldn't have said this to you a week ago, but to-day I can. I don't pretend to explain why—the feeling is too inexplicable. I only know that I can say it now, and that I couldn't a week ago. Will you understand—and answer?"

Still Loder remained mute. His position was horribly incongruous. What could he say? What dared he say?

Confused by his silence, Eve rose.

"If it's only a phase, don't try to hide it," she said. "But if it's going to last—if by any possibility it's going to last—" She hesitated and looked up.

She was quite close to him. He would have been less than man had he been unconscious of the subtle contact of her glance, the nearness of her presence—and no one had ever hinted that manhood was lacking in him. It was a moment of temptation. His own energy, his own intentions, seemed so near; Chilcote and Chilcote's claims so distant and unreal. After all, his life, his ambitions, his determinations, were his own. He lifted his eyes and looked at her.

"You want me to tell you that I will go on?" he said.

Her eyes brightened; she took a step forward. "Yes," she said, "I want it more than anything in the world."

There was a wait. The declaration that would satisfy her came to Loder's lips, but he delayed it. The delay, was fateful. While he stood silent the door opened and the servant who had brought in the tea reappeared.

He crossed the room and handed Loder a telegram. "Any answer, sir?" he said.

Eve moved back to her chair. There was a flush on her cheeks and her eyes were still alertly bright.

Loder tore the telegram open, read it, then threw it Into the fire.

"No answer!" he said, laconically.

At the brusqueness of his voice, Eve looked up. "Disagreeable news?" she said, as the servant departed.

He didn't look at her. He was watching the telegram withering in the centre of the fire.

"No," he said at last, in a strained voice. "No. Only news that I—that I had forgotten to expect."



XI

There was a silence—an uneasy break—after Loder spoke. The episode of the telegram was, to all appearances, ordinary enough, calling forth Eve's question and his own reply as a natural sequence; yet in the pause that followed it each was conscious of a jar, each was aware that in some subtle way the thread of sympathy had been dropped, though to one the cause was inexplicable and to the other only too plain.

Loder watched the ghost of his message grow whiter and thinner, then dissolve into airy fragments and flutter up the chimney. As the last morsel wavered out of sight, he turned and looked at his companion.

"You almost made me commit myself," he said. In the desire to hide his feelings his tone was short.

Eve returned his glance with a quiet regard, but he scarcely saw it. He had a stupefied sense of disaster; a feeling of bitter self-commiseration that for the moment outweighed all other considerations. Almost at the moment of justification the good of life had crumbled in his fingers, the soil given beneath his feet, and with an absence of logic, a lack of justice unusual in him, he let resentment against Chilcote sweep suddenly over his mind.

Eve, still watching him, saw the darkening of his expression, and with a quiet movement rose from her chair.

"Lady Sarah has a theatre-party to-night, and I am dining with her," she said. "It is an early dinner, so I must think about dressing. I'm sorry you think I tried to draw you into anything. I must have explained myself badly." She laughed a little, to cover the slight discomfiture that her tone betrayed, and as she laughed she moved across the room towards the door.

Loder, engrossed in the check to his own schemes, incensed at the suddenness of Chilcote's recall, and still more incensed at his own folly in not having anticipated it, was oblivious for the moment of both her movement and her words. Then, quite abruptly, they obtruded themselves upon him, breaking through his egotism with something of the sharpness of pain following a blow. Turning quickly from the fireplace, he faced the shadowy room across which she had passed, but simultaneously with his turning she gained the door.

The knowledge that she was gone struck him with a sense of double loss. "Wait!" he called, suddenly moving forward. But almost at once he paused, chilled by the solitude of the room.

"Eve!" he said, using her name unconsciously for the first time.

But the corridor, as well as the room, was empty; he was too late. He stood irresolute; then he laughed shortly, turned, and passed back towards the fireplace.

The blow had fallen, the inevitable come to pass, and nothing remained but to take the fact with as good a grace as possible. Chilcote's telegram had summoned him to Clifford's Inn at seven o'clock, and it was now well on towards six. He pulled out his watch—Chilcote's watch he realized, with a touch of grim humor as he stooped to examine the dial by the light of the fire; then, as if the humor had verged to another feeling, he stood straight again and felt for the electric button in the wall. His fingers touched it, and simultaneously the room was lighted.

The abrupt alteration from shadow to light came almost as a shock. The feminine arrangement of the tea-table seemed incongruous beside the sober books and the desk laden with papers—incongruous as his own presence in the place. The thought was unpleasant, and he turned aside as if to avoid it; but at the movement his eyes fell on Chilcote's cigarette-box with its gleaming monogram, and the whimsical suggestion of his first morning rose again. The idea that the inanimate objects in the room knew him for what he was—recognized the interloper where human eyes saw the rightful possessor—returned to his mind. Through all his disgust and chagrin a smile forced itself to his lips, and, crossing the room for the second time, he passed into Chilcote's bedroom.

There the massive furniture and sombre atmosphere fitted better with his mood than the energy and action which the study always suggested. Walking directly to the great bed, he sat on its side and for several minutes stared straight in front of him, apparently seeing nothing; then at last the apathy passed from him, as his previous anger against Chilcote had passed. He stood up slowly, drawing his long limbs together, and recrossed the room, passing along the corridor and through the door communicating with the rest of the house. Five minutes later he was in the open air and walking steadily eastward, his hat drawn forward and his overcoat buttoned up.

As he traversed the streets he allowed himself no thought, Once, as he waited in Trafalgar Square to find a passage between the vehicles, the remembrance of Chilcote's voice coming out of the fog on their first night made itself prominent, but he rejected it quickly, guarding himself from even an involuntary glance at the place of their meeting. The Strand, with its unceasing life, came to him as something almost unfamiliar. Since his identification with the new life no business had drawn him east of Charing Cross, and his first sight of the narrower stream of traffic struck him as garish and unpleasant. As the impression came he accelerated his steps, moved by the wish to make regret and retrospection alike impossible by a contact with actual forces.

Still walking hastily, he entered Clifford's Inn, but there almost unconsciously his feet halted. There was something in the quiet immutability of the place that sobered energy, both mental and physical. A sense of changelessness—the changelessness of inanimate things, that rises in such solemn contrast to the variableness of mere human nature, which a new environment, a new outlook, sometimes even a new presence, has power to upheave and remould. He paused; then with slower and steadier steps crossed the little court and mounted the familiar stairs of his own house.

As he turned the handle of his own door some one stirred inside the sitting-room. Still under the influence of the stones and trees that he had just left, he moved directly towards the sound, and, without waiting for permission, entered the room. After the darkness of the passage it seemed well alight, for, besides the lamp with its green shade, a large fire burned in the grate and helped to dispel the shadows.

As he entered the room Chilcote rose and came forward, his figure thrown into strong relief by the double light. He was dressed in a shabby tweed suit; his face looked pale and set with a slightly nervous tension, but besides the look and a certain added restlessness of glance there was no visible change. Reaching Loder, he held out his hand.

"Well?" he said, quickly.

The other looked at him questioningly.

"Well? Well? How has it gone?"

"The scheme? Oh, excellently!" Loder's manner was abrupt. Turning from the restless curiosity in Chilcote's eyes, he moved a little way across the room and began to draw off his coat. Then, as if struck by the incivility of the action, he looked back again. "The scheme has gone extraordinarily," he said. "I could almost say absurdly. There are some things, Chilcote, that fairly bowl a man over."

A great relief tinged Chilcote's face. "Good!" he exclaimed. "Tell me all about it."

But Loder was reticent. The moment was not propitious. It was as if a hungry man had dreamed a great banquet and had awakened to his starvation. He was chary of imparting his visions.

"There's nothing to tell," he said, shortly. "All that you'll want to know is here in black and white. I don't think you'll find I have slipped anything; it's a clear business record." From an inner pocket he drew out a bulky note-book, and, recrossing the room, laid it open on the table. It was a correct, even a minute, record of every action that had been accomplished in Chilcote's name. "I don't think you'll find any loose ends," he said, as he turned back the pages. "I had you and your position in my mind all through." He paused and glanced up from the book. "You have a position that absolutely insists upon attention," he added, in a different voice.

At the new tone Chilcote looked up as well. "No moral lectures!" he said, with a nervous laugh. "I was anxious to know if you had pulled it off—and you have reassured me. That's enough. I was in a funk this afternoon to know how things were going-one of those sudden, unreasonable funks. But now that I see you"—he cut himself short and laughed once more "now that I see you, I'm hanged if I don't want to—to prolong your engagement."

Loder glanced at him, then glanced away. He felt a quick shame at the eagerness that rose at the words—a surprised contempt at his own readiness to anticipate the man's weakness. But almost as speedily as he had turned away he looked back again.

"Tush, man!" he said, with his old, intolerant manner. "You're dreaming. You've had your holiday and school's begun again. You must remember you are dining with the Charringtons to-night. Young Charrington's coming of age—quite a big business. Come along! I want my clothes." He laughed, and, moving closer to Chilcote, slapped him on the shoulder.

Chilcote started; then, suddenly becoming imbued with the other's manner, he echoed the laugh.

"By Jove!" he said, "you're right! You're quite right! A man must keep his feet in their own groove." Raising his hand, he began to fumble with his tie.

But Loder kept the same position. "You'll find the check-book in its usual drawer," he said. "I've made one entry of a hundred pounds—pay for the first week. The rest can stand over until—" He paused abruptly.

Chilcote shifted his position. "Don't talk about that. It upsets me to anticipate. I can make out a check to-morrow payable to John Loder."

"No. That can wait. The name of Loder is better out of the book. We can't be too careful." Loder spoke with unusual impetuosity. Already a slight, unreasonable jealousy was coloring his thoughts. Already he grudged the idea of Chilcote with his unstable glance and restless fingers opening the drawers and sorting the papers that for one stupendous fortnight had been his without question. Turning aside, he changed the subject brusquely.

"Come into the bedroom," he said. "It's half-past seven if it's a minute, and the Charringtons' show is at nine." Without waiting for a reply, he walked across the room and held the door open.

There was no silence while they exchanged clothes. Loder talked continuously, sometimes in short, curt sentences, sometimes with ironic touches of humor; he talked until Chilcote, strangely affected by contact with another personality after his weeks of solitude, fell under his influence—his excitement rising, his imagination stirring at the novelty of change. At last, garbed once more in the clothes of his own world, he passed from the bedroom back into the sitting-room, and there halted, waiting for his companion.

Almost directly Loder followed. He came into the room quietly, and, moving at once to the table, picked up the note-book.

"I'm not going to preach," he began, "so you needn't shut me up. But I'll say just one thing—a thing that will get said. Try and keep your hold! Remember your responsibilities—and keep your hold!" He spoke energetically, looking earnestly into Chilcote's eyes. He did not realize it, but he was pleading for his own career.

Chilcote paled a little, as he always did in face of a reality. Then he extended his hand.

"My dear fellow," he said, with a touch of hauteur, "a man can generally be trusted to look after his own life."

Extricating his hand almost immediately, he turned towards the door and without a word of farewell passed into the little hall, leaving Loder alone in the sitting-room.



XII

On the night of Chilcote's return to his own, Loder tasted the lees of life poignantly for the first time. Before their curious compact had been entered upon he had been, if not content, at least apathetic; but with action the apathy had been dispersed, never again to regain its old position.

He realized with bitter certainty that his was no real home-coming. On entering Chilcote's house he had experienced none of the unfamiliarity, none of the unsettled awkwardness, that assailed him now. There he had almost seemed the exile returning after many hardships; here, in the atmosphere made common by years, he felt an alien. It was illustrative of the man's character that sentimentalities found no place in his nature. Sentiments were not lacking, though they lay out of sight, but sentimentalities he altogether denied.

Left alone in the sitting-room after Chilcote's departure, his first sensation was one of physical discomfort and unfamiliarity. His own clothes, with their worn looseness, brought no sense of friendliness such as some men find in an old garment. Lounging, and the clothes that suggested lounging, had no appeal for him. In his eyes the garb that implies responsibility was symbolic and even inspiring.

And, as with clothes, so with his actual surroundings. Each detail of his room was familiar, but not one had ever become intimately close. He had used the place for years, but he had used it as he might use a hotel; and whatever of his household gods had come with him remained, like himself, on sufferance. His entrance into Chilcote's surroundings had been altogether different. Unknown to himself, he had been in the position of a young artist who, having roughly modelled in clay, is brought into the studio of a sculptor. To his outward vision everything is new, but his inner sight leaps to instant understanding. Amid all the strangeness he recognizes the one essential—the workshop, the atmosphere, the home.

On this first night of return Loder comprehended something of his position; and, comprehending, he faced the problem and fought with it.

He had made his bargain and must pay his share. Weighing this, he had looked about his room with a quiet gaze. Then at last, as if finding the object really sought for, his eyes had come round to the mantel-piece and rested on the pipe-rack. The pipes stood precisely as he had left them. He had looked at them for a long time, then an ironic expression that was almost a smile had touched his lips, and, crossing the room, he had taken the oldest and blackest from its place and slowly filled it with tobacco.

With the first indrawn breath of smoke his attitude had unbent. Without conscious determination, he had chosen the one factor capable of easing his mood. A cigarette is for the trivial moments of life; a cigar for its fulfilments, its pleasant, comfortable retrospections; but in real distress—in the solving of question, the fighting of difficulty—a pipe is man's eternal solace,

So he had passed the first night of his return to the actualities of life. Next day his mind was somewhat settled and outward aid was not so essential; but though facts faced him more solidly, they were nevertheless very drab in shade. The necessity for work, that blessed antidote to ennui, no longer forced him to endeavor. He was no longer penniless; but the money, he possessed brought with it no desires. When a man has lived from hand to mouth for years, and suddenly finds himself with a hundred pounds in his pocket, the result is sometimes curious. He finds with a vague sense of surprise that he has forgotten how to spend. That extravagance, like other artificial passions, requires cultivation.

This he realized even more fully on the days that followed the night of his first return; and with it was born a new bitterness. The man who has friends and no money may find life difficult; but the man who has money and no friend to rejoice in his fortune or benefit by his generosity is aloof indeed. With the leaven of incredulity that works in all strong natures, Loder distrusted the professional beggar —therefore the charity that bestows easily and promiscuously was denied him; and of other channels of generosity he was too self-contained to have learned the secret.

When depression falls upon a man of usually even temperament it descends with a double weight. The mercurial nature has a hundred counterbalancing devices to rid itself of gloom—a sudden lifting of spirit, a memory of other moods lived through, other blacknesses dispersed by time; but the man of level nature has none of these. Depression, when it comes, is indeed depression; no phase of mind to be superseded by another phase, but a slackening of all the chords of life.

It was through such a depression as this that he labored during three weeks, while no summons and no hint of remembrance came from Chilcote. His position was peculiarly difficult. He found no action in the present, and towards the future he dared not trust himself to look. He had slipped the old moorings that familiarity had rendered endurable; but having slipped them, he had found no substitute. Such was his case on the last night of the three weeks, and such his frame of mind as he crossed Fleet Street from Clifford's Inn to Middle Temple Lane.

It was scarcely seven o'clock, but already the dusk was falling; the greater press of vehicles had ceased, and the light of the street lamps gleamed back from the spaces of dry and polished roadway, worn smooth as a mirror by wheels and hoofs. Something of the solitude of night that sits so ill on the strenuous city street was making itself felt, though the throngs of people on the pathway still streamed eastward and westward and the taverns made a busy trade.

Having crossed the roadway, Loder paused for a moment to survey the scene. But humanity in the abstract made small appeal to him, and his glance wandered from the passers-by to the buildings massed like clouds against the dark sky. As his gaze moved slowly from one to the other a clock near at hand struck seven, and an instant later the chorus was taken up by a dozen clamorous tongues. Usually he scarcely heard, and never heeded, these innumerable chimes; but this evening their effect was strange. Coming out of the darkness, they seemed to possess a personal note, a human declaration. The impression was fantastic, but it was strong; with a species of revolt against life and his own personality, he turned slowly and moved forward in the direction of Ludgate Hill.

For a space he continued his course, then, reaching Bouverie Street, he turned sharply to the right and made his way down the slight incline that leads to the Embankment. There he paused and drew a long breath. The sense of space and darkness soothed him. Pulling his cap over his eyes, he crossed to the river and walked on in the direction of Westminster Bridge.

As he walked the great mass, of water by his side looked dense and smooth as oil with its sweeping width and network of reflected light. On its farther bank rose the tall buildings, the chimneys, the flaring lights that suggest another and an alien London; close at hand stretched the solid stone parapet, giving assurance of protection.

All these things he saw with his mental eyes, but with his mental eyes only, for his physical gaze was fixed ahead where the Houses of Parliament loomed out of the dusk. From the great building his eyes never wavered until the Embankment was traversed and Westminster Bridge reached. Then he paused, resting his arms on the coping of the bridge.

In the tense quietude of the darkness the place looked vast and inspiring. The shadowy Terrace, the silent river, the rows of lighted windows, each was significant. Slowly and comprehensively his glance passed from one to the other. He was no sentimentalist and no dreamer; his act was simply the act of a man whose interests, robbed of their natural outlet, turn instinctively towards the forms and symbols of the work that is denied them. His scrutiny was steady—even cold. He was raised to no exaltation by the vastness of the building, nor was he chilled by any dwarfing of himself. He looked at it long and thoughtfully; then, again moving slowly, he turned and retraced his steps.

His mind was full as he walked back, still oblivious of the stone parapet of the Embankment, the bare trees, and the flaring lights of the advertisements across the water. Turning to the left, he regained Fleet Street and made for his own habitation with the quiet accuracy that some men exhibit in moments of absorption.

He crossed Clifford's Inn with the same slow, almost listless step; then, as his own doorway came into view, he stopped. Some one was standing in its recess.

For a moment he wondered if his fancy were playing him a trick; then his reason sprang to certainty with so fierce a leap that for an instant his mind recoiled. For we more often stand aghast at the strength of our own feelings than before the enormity of our neighbor's actions.

"Is that you, Chilcote?" he said, below his breath.

At the sound of his voice the other wheeled round. "Hallo!" he said. "I thought you were the ghost of some old inhabitant. I suppose I am very unexpected?"

Loder took the hand that he extended and pressed the fingers unconsciously. The sight of this man was like the finding of an oasis at the point where the desert is sandiest, deadliest, most unbearable.

"Yes, you are—unexpected," he answered.

Chilcote looked at him, then looked out into the court. "I'm done up," he said. "I'm right at the end of the tether." He laughed as he said it, but in the dim light of the hall Loder thought his face looked ill and harassed despite the flush that the excitement of the meeting had brought to it. Taking his arm, he drew him towards the stairs.

"So the rope has run out, eh?" he said, in imitation of the other's tone. But under the quiet of his manner his own nerves were throbbing with the peculiar alertness of anticipation; a sudden sense of mastery over life, that lifted him above surroundings and above persons—a sense of stature, mental and physical, from which he surveyed the world. He felt as if fate, in the moment of utter darkness, had given him a sign.

As they crossed the hall, Chilcote had drawn away and was already mounting the stairs. And as Loder followed, it came sharply to his mind that here, in the slipshod freedom of a door that was always open and stairs that were innocent of covering, lay his companion's panion's real niche—unrecognized in outward avowal, but acknowledged by the inward, keener sense that manifests the individual.

In silence they mounted the stairs, but on the first landing Chilcote paused and looked back, surveying Loder from the superior height of two steps.

"I did very well at first," he said. "I did very well—I almost followed your example, for a week or so. I found myself on a sort of pinnacle—and I clung on. But in the last ten days I've—I've rather lapsed."

"Why?" Loder avoided looking at his face; he kept his eyes fixed determinately on the spot where his own hand gripped the banister.

"Why?" Chilcote repeated. "Oh, the prehistoric tale—weakness stronger than strength. I'm-I'm sorry to come down on you like this, but it's the social side that bowls me over. It's the social side I can't stick."

"The social side? But I thought—"

"Don't think. I never think; it entails such a constant upsetting of principles and theories. We did arrange for business only, but one can't set up barriers. Society pushes itself everywhere nowadays—into business most of all. I don't want you for theatre-parties or dinners. But a big reception with a political flavor is different. A man has to be seen at these things; he needn't say anything or do anything, but it's bad form if he fails to show up."

Loder raised his head. "You must explain," he said, abruptly.

Chilcote started slightly at the sudden demand.

"I—I suppose I'm rather irrelevant," he said, quickly. "Fact is, there's a reception at the Bramfells' to-night. You know Blanche Bramfell—Viscountess Bramfell, sister to Lillian Astrupp." His words conveyed nothing to Loder, but he did not consider that. All explanations were irksome to him and he invariably chafed to be done with them.

"And you've got to put in an appearance—for party reasons?" Loder broke in.

Chilcote showed relief. "Yes. Old Fraide makes rather a point of it—so does Eve." He said the last words carelessly; then, as if their sound recalled something, his expression changed. A touch of satirical amusement touched his lips and he laughed.

"By-the-way, Loder," he said, "my wife was actually tolerant of me for nine or ten days after my return. I thought your representation was to be quite impersonal? I'm not jealous," he laughed. "I'm not jealous, I assure you; but the burned child shouldn't grow absentminded."

At his tone and his laugh Loder's blood stirred; with a sudden, unexpected impulse his hand tightened on the banister, and, looking up, he caught sight of the face above him—his own face, it seemed, alight with malicious interest. At the sight a strange sensation seized him; his grip on the banister loosened, and, pushing past Chilcote, he hurriedly mounted the stairs.

Outside his own door the other overtook him.

"Loder!" he said. "Loder! I meant no harm. A man must have a laugh sometimes."

But Loder was facing the door and did not turn round.

A sudden fear shook Chilcote. "Loder!" he exclaimed again, "you wouldn't desert me? I can't go back to-night. I can't go back."

Still Loder remained immovable.

Alarmed by his silence, Chilcote stepped closer to him.

"Loder! Loder, you won't desert me?" He caught hastily at his arm.

With a quick repulsion Loder shook him off; then almost as quickly he turned round.

"What fools we all are!" he said, abruptly. "We, only differ in degree. Come in, and let us change our clothes."



XIII

The best moments of a man's life are the moments when, strong in himself, he feels that the world lies before him. Gratified ambition may be the summer, but anticipation is the ardent spring-time of a man's career.

As Loder drove that night frown Fleet Street to Grosvenor Square he realized this—though scarcely with any degree of consciousness—for he was no accomplished self-analyst. But in a wave of feeling too vigorous to be denied he recognized his regained foothold—the step that lifted him at once from the pit to the pinnacle.

In that moment of realization he looked neither backward nor forward. The present was all-sufficing. Difficulties might loom ahead, but difficulties had but one object—the testing and sharpening of a man's strength. In the first deep surge of egotistical feeling he almost rejoiced in Chilcote's weakness. The more Chilcote tangled the threads of his life, the stronger must be the fingers that unravelled them. He was possessed by a great impatience; the joy of action was stirring in his blood.

Leaving the cab, he walked confidently to the door of Chilcote's house and inserted the latch-key. Even in this small act there was a grain of individual satisfaction. Then very quietly he opened the door and crossed the hall.

As he entered, a footman was arranging the fire that burned in the big grate. Seeing the man, he halted.

"Where is your mistress?" he asked, in unconscious repetition of his first question in the same house.

The man looked up. "She has just finished dinner, sir. She dined alone in her own room." He glanced at Loder in the quick, uncertain way that was noticeable in all the servants of the household when they addressed their master. Loder saw the look and wondered what depth of curiosity it betrayed, how much of insight into the domestic life that he must always be content to skim. For an instant the old resentment against Chilcote tinged his exaltation, but he swept it angrily aside. Without further remark he began to mount the stairs.

Gaining the landing, he did not turn as usual to the door that shut off Chilcote's rooms, but moved onward down the corridor towards Eve's private sitting-room. He moved slowly till the door was reached; then he, paused and lifted his hand. There was a moment's wait while his fingers rested on the handle; then a sensation he could not explain—a reticence, a reluctance to intrude upon this one precinct—caused his, fingers to relax. With a slightly embarrassed gesture he drew back slowly and retraced his steps.

Once in Chilcote's bedroom, he walked to the nearest bell and pressed it. Renwick responded, and at sight of him Loder's feelings warmed with the same sense of fitness and familiarity that the great bed and sombre furniture of the room had inspired.

But the man did not come forward as he had expected. He remained close to the door with a hesitation that was unusual in a trained servant. It struck Loder that possibly his stolidity had exasperated Chilcote, and that possibly Chilcote had been at no pains to conceal the exasperation. The idea caused him to smile involuntarily.

"Come into the room, Renwick," he said. "It's uncomfortable to see you standing there. I want to know if Mrs. Chilcote has sent me any message about to-night."

Renwick studied him furtively as he came forward. "Yes, sir," he said. "Mrs. Chilcote's maid said that the carriage was ordered for ten-fifteen, and she hoped that would suit you." He spoke reluctantly, as if expecting a rebuke.

At the opening sentence Loder had turned aside, but now, as the man finished, he wheeled round again and looked at him closely with his keen, observant eyes.

"Look here," he said. "I can't have you speak to me like that. I may come down on you rather sharply when my—my nerves are bad; but when I'm myself I treat you—well, I treat you decently, at any rate. You'll have to learn to discriminate. Look at me now!" A thrill of risk and of rulership passed through him as he spoke. "Look at me now! Do I look as I looked this morning—or yesterday?"

The man eyed him half stupidly, half timidly.

"Well?" Loder insisted.

"Well, sir," Renwick responded, with some slowness; "you look the same—and you look different. A healthier color, perhaps, sir—and the eye clearer." He grew more confident under Loder's half-humorous, half-insistent gaze. "Now that I look closer, sir—"

Loder laughed. "That's it!" he said. "Now that you look closer. You'll have to grow observant: observation is an excellent quality in a servant. Wheat you come into a room in future, look first of all at me—and take your cue from that. Remember that serving a man with nerves is like serving two masters. Now you can go; and tell Mrs. Chilcote's maid that I shall be quite ready at a quarter-past ten."

"Yes, sir. And after that?"

"Nothing further. I sha'n't want you again to-night." He turned away as he spoke, and moved towards the great fire that was always kept alight in Chilcote's room. But as the man moved towards the door he wheeled back again. "Oh, one thing more, Renwick! Bring me some sandwiches and a whiskey." He remembered for the first time that he had eaten nothing since early afternoon.