ilty. So in a way, it's an immense relief. I'd like to have seen
you first, but it would only distress you, and I might not have been able
to go through with it after. Nedda, darling, if you still love me when I
get out, we'll go to New Zealand, away from this country where they bully
poor creatures like Bob. Be brave! I'll write to-morrow, if they let
me.

"Your

"Derek."

The first sensation in Felix on reading this effusion was poignant
recollection of the little lawyer's look after Derek had made the scene
at Tryst's committal and of his words: 'Nothing in it, is there?' His
second thought: 'Is this the cutting of the knot that I've been looking
for?' His third, which swept all else away: 'My poor little darling!
What business has that boy to hurt her again like this!'

He heard her say:

"Tryst told me himself he did it, Dad! He told me when I went to see him
in the prison. Honour doesn't demand what isn't true! Oh, Dad, help
me!"

Felix was slow in getting free from the cross currents of reflection.
"He wrote this last night," he said dismally. "He may have done it
already. We must go and see John."

Nedda clasped her hands. "Ah! Yes!"

And Felix had not the heart to add what he was thinking: 'Not that I see
what good he can do!' But, though sober reason told him this, it was
astonishingly comforting to be going to some one who could be relied on
to see the facts of the situation without any of that 'flimflam' with
which imagination is accustomed to surround them. "And we'll send Derek
a wire for what it's worth."

They went at once to the post-office, Felix composing this message on the
way: 'Utterly mistaken chivalry you have no right await our arrival Felix
Freeland.' He handed it to her to read, and passed it under the brass
railing to the clerk, not without the feeling of shame due from one who
uses the word chivalry in a post-office.

On the way to the Tube station he held her arm tightly, but whether to
impart courage or receive it he could not have said, so strung-up in
spirit did he feel her. With few words exchanged they reached Whitehall.
Marking their card 'Urgent,' they were received within ten minutes.

John was standing in a high, white room, smelling a little of papers and
tobacco, and garnished solely by five green chairs, a table, and a bureau
with an immense number of pigeonholes, whereat he had obviously been
seated. Quick to observe what concerned his little dau