ttle fruit of his fresh
cheek to Amaldi's, said:

"Bobby man!... Bobby _nith_ man--tome back!"

Amaldi's heart glowed and ached. He kissed the boy with passion, then
set him gently down and went away. He had found that which was lost to
him even as he found it, and the world seemed to him like a vast house
full of vacant, echoing rooms.

* * * * *

It was decided that Chesney should be taken to Dynehurst during the next
week. He affected a listless apathy, and seemed not to care whether he
went or stayed. Dr. Hopkins expressed himself satisfied with his
condition. He thought, however, that the sooner he could be moved to the
country the better it would be for him in every way. He had written
fully to Dr. Bellamy, the Wychcotes' physician at Dynehurst. For Sophy
these intervening days were peaceful but heavy. She could not recapture,
somehow, her high mood of the evening of her talk with Cecil. Things
went along evenly, monotonously. He was never either cheerful or
depressed--talked little, sometimes locked his bedroom door for hours
together. This made her curiously apprehensive. What was he doing behind
that locked door? She felt that Gaynor also was vaguely uneasy over this
new phase, but they did not mention it to each other. Apart from this
one thing, Cecil was very reasonable--submitted to having all wine
withdrawn from his diet; even put up with having his cigarettes cut down
to eight a day. Neither Sophy nor Gaynor suspected for a moment that he
had a third hypodermic syringe in his possession. With the startling and
crafty acumen of the morphinomaniac, he had secreted it in the last
place that they would have thought of--namely, in the same letter-case,
of which now he left the key carelessly on his dressing-table or the
little stand by his bed. Nor did they, in their inexperience of such
things, realise that one who had for three years been addicted to the
habit, and who, during two years of that time, had been accustomed to
large and constant doses of the drug, could not possibly have supported
its withdrawal, even gradually, with the composure shown by Chesney.

Dr. Hopkins always made his visits about ten in the morning; and, deeply
cunning, determined that no mistake on his part should prevent his
escape from the town where Algernon Carfew lived, an ever present
menace, Chesney refrained from taking his usual dose until after the
physician had seen him. These occasions of