That's all right," said the American, non-committally. "Good-night.'

But it is a question whether Hackney Fyson, on the road to his older club, altogether regretted the things which had brought him away from the newer.

Axel Forsberg, however, was not pleased at all. He mounted the stair very slowly, and when at last he had persuaded himself to enter once more his own room, he found his friend lying back in an easy-chair with eyes half closed, smoking. In the attitude there appeared more of indolence than of suffering; and the face, when the eyes opened, was curiously impassive.

66

I think you're making too much of this, Le Dane," Forsberg began, rushing into speech. "Of course it's all damned annoying, but-"

Anthony interrupted him.

"How can you tell, old man, how much I'm making of it?" he asked. "The actor has for the moment blunted the edge of my curiosity. I came to the club to tell you that I can't finish those figures of Delorme's to-night-nor the other man's papers. I was too tired before. I'm off now."

He rose, flung his coat over his arm, and put on his hat, with less care than usual of its angle.

"Where to?" asked Forsberg.

"To bed," replied Anthony, turning with his hand on the door-knob. "I slept badly last night, and I can't think of anything but sheets. I needn't tell you-at least, I can't now-how grateful I am to you for bringing that fellow here. I think he was pretty decent, eh?"

"Very decent," said Forsberg.

Good-night," said Anthony; and then, but for a sudden weakening within him, he would have gone. That weakening, however, not only held the departing feet, but loosened his tongue.

"I suppose," he said-and, do what he would, he could not keep the wistfulness out of his voice, "-I suppose I shall be I to you-whoever I am."

Of course," answered his friend, more cheerfully than he felt. "It's all flapdoodle, this yarn. Anyway, Anthony, you always have been you, whoever they were."

""

I wonder," said Anthony; and went home to bed. Axel Forsberg was too wise to press his company.

But

he leaned out of his open window, and with his eyes followed

H

the figure of his friend until it disappeared round the corner of the short street. Then he dropped into the chair Anthony had left, lit a cigar very large and very green, and followed him the rest of the way in his heart. "He slept ill last night -he's worked hard as well as worried hard all day," he mused. "He has done nothing to cause the trouble, he can do nothing to stop it-oh, yes, he'll sleep to-night."

Then his thought, growing swifter and less distinct, hurried over the events of the past few days.

"Their evil-minded imaginings amount to just nothing," he reflected. It's the red-nosed duck-feeder that gets him in the neck."

He rose, stretched his long arms, and tossed the reeking stump of his cigar into the street.

"All the same," he said, half aloud, "—well, just look at the two faces!"

HIS

CHAPTER XVIII

FRIDAY MORNING

IS friend was not mistaken; Anthony slept well that Thursday night, and further into the Friday than his custom was. On rising, however, he was surprised to find how little rested he felt. As he searched for the cause of what may be called a lack of elasticity rather than positive fatigue, the whole story of the previous day rushed back upon him.

He was at once determined that the matter, at least as far as he himself was concerned, could not be left, as Hackney Fyson had advised, "to lie in the mud." And, in spite of what he had said to the man who had given him information, he found that this morning he cared very little to know who had said these things, or who had prompted the saying of them; but he was sure that, until he knew whether what had been said and what had been hinted were true or false, he would never have a mind at rest. He thought of his Aunt Mary as his only helper; and he was in no wise afraid that she would shirk plain language with him.

"I'd go to her now, he thought, as he rose from the breakfast-table, "if I hadn't almost promised to get through those papers.

When in his workshop he saw those papers in their bulk, a sickening sense of the futility of all things came over him with a rush. If it had not been summer he could have thrown the papers there and then upon the fire. That dark wave which most of us have known so long and so often that each has made for it his own more or less prophylactic namewhether it be the blues, nerves, jumps or a damned liver-this wave struck Anthony for the first time, and for a while he was submerged.

But habits of work and instincts of enterprise are not easily banished; and even as he dropped heavily into his desk chair, feeling rather than thinking that he need not and would not do another stroke of work while he lived, his hand stole mechanically to the next paper of his task, and drew it be

neath his eyes. They fell upon the figures of a complicated calculation, about which, in his interrupted labours, there had gathered some of those associations, nebulous and intangible, which are certainly æsthetic and probably ethical in character. His great ambition appeared to him once more; once more he loved it; loved it the more that he perceived it was the one thing in his life which even the truth of such evil as he had heard whispered could not tarnish nor even touch.

So once more he fell to work.

Bethune had been a frequent visitor of late. This morning Anthony had no wish to see him, and rose suddenly to bid Shinniver deny him even to the "Great Chinaman." He opened the door quickly, pulling its other handle roughly from the fingers of the man he did not wish to see.

Bethune looked at him and smiled.

"You don't want me," he said.

The man's presence seemed to sweep away Anthony's bitterness of mind.

"I ought not to want you or anyone," he said. “But come in for a few minutes. Look at that," he added, pointing to his table," and you'll understand."

Bethune sat down.

"I'm afraid it's a kind of work I can't help you in," he said.

"Nobody can," Anthony replied. "It's my opinion of other men's conclusions that's wanted, you see. As a rule, too," he added, with what he thought safe reference to his own troubles, "the worse the work or the worry, the less can anyone else help you with it."

Bethune the optimist joined issue at once.

"From my own experience," he said, "I should say it's only when you're really cornered that you find out the use of the other man."

Anthony laughed.

"I've no right to generalize," he admitted. "I've no experience. I can always do my work myself, and worry hasn't been in my line."

Bethune looked at the boy with steady, piercing eyes. Anthony turned to the table, shifting the papers. He had a feeling, which he believed unreasonable, that here, would he but hold out his hand for it, was sympathy and help for him. He felt the intrusion of Bethune's gaze, and wavered.

"Worry," said the elder man, “is an acquired taste. You

can get used to it, like anything else. It's worst when it's

Anthony said nothing It was absurd that he should feel inclined to confide such a trouble as his in any man-in this man, incredible! Yet the inclination was there.

"Something has happened since I saw you last," Bethune went on. "Something that has made you unhappy."

"You're quite right, sir," said the boy. "I wonder how you know. I feel so absurdly childish when I'm talking to you, that I hardly trust myself not to blurt out all my little

"Blurt," said Bethune, with a sudden expression of countenance which swept away, as the sun will kill shadows, twentyfive years of the fifty from his face.

But the very strength of the appeal, which this momentarily transfigured face made to him, put Anthony on his guard. Blurt, he told himself, he would not. But neither would he send the man away until he had tried his hand upon him. Surely he might extract from him some evidence, corroborative or destructive of Beldover's insinuations.

"It's a woman, isn't it?" asked Bethune, with sympathy so direct and sincere that the commonplace phrase sounded in no way offensive.

"To be honest more than I need," replied Anthony, "it was, two days ago. Now it's a man-and the man's the worst."

66

'Very likely," said Bethune. Can't you tell me some

more?

"

"I want to tell you more-and I can't think why I do," Anthony answered. "And I've made up my mind that I won't. I don't mean to be rude, sir, but—”

"You're not," said Bethune. You've taken a line, and I can only like you better for sticking to it, and warning me off." Then, changing the subject, "My book's out," he said, and I came to bring you a copy."

Anthony was touched by the simple kindness of the man. As he untied the parcel and turned over the pages to reading which he had looked forward with so much pleasure, he saw his opportunity, and in spite of instinctive distaste for the task, pursued his intent.

"It's a long book," he said. "Didn't you tell me, sir, that you did all the work in three months? It seems impossible."