They had stopped short before a long
row of shabby-genteel houses in the outskirts of Kensington. He took
the boy's outstretched hand and pushed open the gate. The door was
open, and Freddy dragged him into a room on the ground floor.

A man was lying on a sofa before the window, wrapped in an untidy
dressing-gown, and with the lower part of his body covered up with
a rug. His face, fair and florid, with more than a suggestion of
coarseness in the heavy jaw and thick lips, was drawn and wrinkled
as though with pain. His lips wore an habitually peevish expression.
He did not offer to rise when they came in. Matravers was thankful
that Freddy spared him the necessity of immediate speech. He had
recognized in a moment the man who had sat alone night after night
in the back seats of the New Theatre, whose slow drawn-out cry of
agony had so curiously affected him on that night of her performance.
He recognized, too, the undergraduate of his college sent down for
flagrant misbehaviour, the leader of a set whom he himself had
denounced as a disgrace to the University. And this man was her
husband!

"Daddy," the boy cried, dropping Matravers' hand and running over to
the couch, "I've been run over by a hansom cab, and I'm all buggy, but
I ain't hurt, and this gentleman brought me home. Daddy can't get up,
you know," Freddy explained; "his legs is bad."

"Run over, eh!" exclaimed the man on the couch. "It's like that girl's
damned carelessness."

He patted the boy's head, not unkindly, and Matravers found words.

"My cab unfortunately knocked your little boy down near Trafalgar
Square, but I am thankful to say that he was not hurt. I thought that
I had better bring him straight home, though, as he has had a roll in
the dust."

At the sound of Matravers' voice, the man started and looked at him
earnestly. A dull red flush stained his cheeks. He looked away.

"It was very good of you, Mr. Matravers," he said. "I can't think what
the girl could have been about."

"I did not see her until after the accident. I am glad that it was no
worse," Matravers answered. "You have not forgotten me, then?"

John Drage shook his head.

"No, sir," he said. "I have not forgotten you. I should have known
your voice anywhere. Besides, I knew that you were in London. I saw
you at the New Theatre."

There was a short silence. Matravers glanced around the room with an
inward shiver. The usual horrors of a suburban parlour were augmented