se I did not let the holiday-mood master me. I
realised the seriousness of my mission. I must concentrate myself on
the matter in hand: Miss Dobson's visit. What was going to happen?
Prescience was no part of my outfit. From what I knew about Miss Dobson,
I deduced that she would be a great success. That was all. Had I had the
instinct that was given to those Emperors in stone, and even to the
dog Corker, I should have begged Clio to send in my stead some man of
stronger nerve. She had charged me to be calmly vigilant, scrupulously
fair. I could have been neither, had I from the outset foreseen all.
Only because the immediate future was broken to me by degrees, first as
a set of possibilities, then as a set of probabilities that yet might
not come off, was I able to fulfil the trust imposed in me. Even so, it
was hard. I had always accepted the doctrine that to understand all is
to forgive all. Thanks to Zeus, I understood all about Miss Dobson, and
yet there were moments when she repelled me--moments when I wished to
see her neither from without nor from within. So soon as the Duke of
Dorset met her on the Monday night, I felt I was in duty bound to keep
him under constant surveillance. Yet there were moments when I was so
sorry for him that I deemed myself a brute for shadowing him.

Ever since I can remember, I have been beset by a recurring doubt as
to whether I be or be not quite a gentleman. I have never attempted to
define that term: I have but feverishly wondered whether in its usual
acceptation (whatever that is) it be strictly applicable to myself. Many
people hold that the qualities connoted by it are primarily moral--a
kind heart, honourable conduct, and so forth. On Clio's mission, I found
honour and kindness tugging me in precisely opposite directions. In so
far as honour tugged the harder, was I the more or the less gentlemanly?
But the test is not a fair one. Curiosity tugged on the side of honour.
This goes to prove me a cad? Oh, set against it the fact that I did
at one point betray Clio's trust. When Miss Dobson had done the deed
recorded at the close of the foregoing chapter, I gave the Duke of
Dorset an hour's grace.

I could have done no less. In the lives of most of us is some one thing
that we would not after the lapse of how many years soever confess to
our most understanding friend; the thing that does not bear thinking
of; the one thing to be forgotten; the unforgettable thing. Not
the commis