often march shoulder to shoulder with Jesuitry in natures to whom success
is vital.

In the narrow stone passage leading to his staircase, a friend had called
out: "Bravo, Darrant! That was a squeak! Congratulations!" And with a
bitter little smile Keith thought: 'Congratulations! I!'

At the first possible moment the hurried back to the Strand, and hailing
a cab, he told the man to put him down at a turning near to Borrow
Street.

It was the girl who opened to his knock. Startled, clasping her hands,
she looked strange to Keith in her black skirt and blouse of some soft
velvety stuff the colour of faded roses. Her round, rather long throat
was bare; and Keith noticed fretfully that she wore gold earrings. Her
eyes, so pitch dark against her white face, and the short fair hair,
which curled into her neck, seemed both to search and to plead.

"My brother?"

"He is not in, sir, yet."

"Do you know where he is?"

"No."

"He is living with you here now?"

"Yes."

"Are you still as fond of him as ever, then?"

With a movement, as though she despaired of words, she clasped her hands
over her heart. And he said:

"I see."

He had the same strange feeling as on his first visit to her, and when
through the chink in the curtains he had watched her kneeling--of pity
mingled with some faint sexual emotion. And crossing to the fire he
asked:

"May I wait for him?"

"Oh! Please! Will you sit down?"

But Keith shook his head. And with a catch in her breath, she said:

"You will not take him from me. I should die."

He turned round on her sharply.

"I don't want him taken from you. I want to help you keep him. Are you
ready to go away, at any time?"

"Yes. Oh, yes!"

"And he?"

She answered almost in a whisper:

"Yes; but there is that poor man."

"That poor man is a graveyard thief; a hyena; a ghoul--not worth
consideration." And the rasp in his own voice surprised him.

"Ah!" she sighed. "But I am sorry for him. Perhaps he was hungry. I
have been hungry--you do things then that you would not. And perhaps he
has no one to love; if you have no one to love you can be very bad. I
think of him often--in prison."

Between his teeth Keith muttered: "And Laurence?"

"We do never speak of it, we are afraid."

"He's not told you, then, about the trial?"

Her eyes dilated.

"The trial! Oh! He was strange last night. This morning, too, he got
up early. Is it-is it over?"

"Yes.