sted. What he expected of me was to extricate him from a
difficult situation. I don't know how far credible this may sound, to
less solemn married couples, but to remain at variance with his wife
seemed to him a considerable incident. Almost a disaster.

"It looks as though I didn't care what happened to her brother," he
said. "And after all if anything..."

I became a little impatient but without raising my tone: "What thing?"
I asked. "The liability to get penal servitude is so far like genius
that it isn't hereditary. And what else can be objected to the girl?
All the energy of her deeper feelings, which she would use up vainly in
the danger and fatigue of a struggle with society may be turned into
devoted attachment to the man who offers her a way of escape from what
can be only a life of moral anguish. I don't mention the physical
difficulties."

Glancing at Fyne out of the corner of one eye I discovered that he was
attentive. He made the remark that I should have said all this to his
wife. It was a sensible enough remark. But I had given Mrs Fyne up.
I asked him if his impression was that his wife meant to entrust him
with a letter for her brother?

No. He didn't think so. There were certain reasons which made Mrs
Fyne unwilling to commit her arguments to paper. Fyne was to be primed
with them. But he had no doubt that if he persisted in his refusal she
would make up her mind to write.

"She does not wish me to go unless with a full conviction that she is
right," said Fyne solemnly.

"She's very exacting," I commented. And then I reflected that she was
used to it. "Would nothing less do for once?"

"You don't mean that I should give way--do you?" asked Fyne in a whisper
of alarmed suspicion.

As this was exactly what I meant, I let his fright sink into him. He
fidgeted. If the word may be used of so solemn a personage, he
wriggled. And when the horrid suspicion had descended into his very
heels, so to speak, he became very still. He sat gazing stonily into
space bounded by the yellow, burnt-up slopes of the rising ground a
couple of miles away. The face of the down showed the white scar of the
quarry where not more than sixteen hours before Fyne and I had been
groping in the dark with horrible apprehension of finding under our
hands the shattered body of a girl. For myself I had in addition the
memory of my meeting with her. She was certainly walking very near the
edge--courting a