Harriet will go home. I'd like to
be here when he arrives, but I can't. You'll be a dear, Howat, won't
you?" she begged. "I'm certain James will give you no trouble. And do
send him to bed early." At this he grew satirical, and she laughed in an
unaccustomed, nervous manner that upset him surprisingly. Honduras drove
her to the station the next morning; and, three days later, deposited
James Polder on the worn stone threshold under the climbing rose.

After dinner the younger man faced him squarely across the apricot glow
of the lamp in the middle room. "This is the third time I've come here
without an invitation from you," he said directly. "It was Mariana this
last. I shut my mouth on what I'd once have crammed down your throat,
and came like any puppy. It wasn't on account of my health, there are
miles of quiet country; it wasn't--" he hesitated, then went
on--"altogether because of Mariana. I wanted to watch you closer; I want
to find out what you are like inside, so I might understand some--some
other things better. I can get out if it's a rank failure."

Howat issued a polite, general dissent. "Now, right there," Polder
stated; "you don't want me; you'd rather I was a thousand miles away,
dead. Well--why don't you say so?" He had not the least conception of a
decent reticence of address, Howat Penny thought, resentfully, at the
discomfort aroused by the young man's sharp attack.

"Certain amenities," he observed coldly, "have been accepted as
desirable, as obligations for--" he hesitated, casting about for a
phrase that would not too conspicuously exclude James Polder. "Say it,"
the latter burst out rudely, "gentlemen. And you all stand about with
one thing to say and another in your head."

"A degree of perception is always admirable," Howat Penny instructed
him. "That's a nasty one," Polder acknowledged; "but I got into it
myself. I can see that." His hand, seared with labour, was pressed on
the table; and the elder realized that, since he had witnessed a heat
tapped, he was not so censorious of the broken nails, the lines of
indelible black. He caught James Polder's gaze, and turned from its
intense questioning. Young cheeks had no business to be so gaunt.
Polder picked up the figurine in red clay, studied it with a troubled
brow, and replaced it with a gesture of hopelessness. "Possibly," Howat
Penny unexpectedly remarked, "possibly you find beauty in a piece of
open hearth steel."

"It's useful," Polder