dangerous times alone? He knew his
uncle too well to believe that he would willingly accept help from him,
their relations being changed, and he knew that no skill and knowledge
but his own, could conduct to a successful issue, enterprises undertaken
under more favourable circumstances.

He was very wretched. He could not put away the discomfort of his
indecision by permitting time and circumstances to decide in the course
which he must take. Whatever was done must be done by him, and at once.
There was no respite of time or chance to fall back upon, in the strait
in which he found himself. He did not hasten home. He had cause enough
to excuse the delay to himself, and he threw himself into the
increasingly painful details of business, with an energy that, for the
time, left no room for painful thoughts. But it was only for the time.
He knew that his lingering was useless, in view of what the end must be,
and he despised himself for his indecision.

If his choice had been altogether between poverty and wealth, it would
have been easy to him, he thought, though it forced itself upon him with
intense bitterness during these days, how the last ten years had changed
the meaning of the word to him. But his honour was involved--his honour
as a man, and as a merchant. He could not leave his uncle to struggle
with misfortune in his old age. He could not let the name, so long
honoured and trusted in the commercial world, be joined with the many
which during the last few months had been coupled with ruin, and even
with shame. He was responsible for the stability or the failure of the
house, which for thirty years had never given cause for doubt or fear.
More than this. His own reputation as a wise and successful man of
business, if not even his personal honour was at stake, to make it
impossible for him to separate himself from the affairs of the firm at a
juncture so perilous.

And then, Lilias. Nothing but her own spoken word could free him from
the tacit engagement that existed between them. In honour he could
never ask her to speak that word.

Through his long journey of days and nights he pondered it all, making
no decision as to what was to be done or said, but growing gradually
conscious as he drew near home, that the life of the last few months,
was coming to seem more and more like a pleasant dream that must be
forgotten in the future. He met his uncle's eager greeting with no word
of change. His face