ad
said, and returned home. Julian still lay on the couch, calmer, but
like one in despair. He begged Waymark to let him remain where he was
through the night, declaring that in any case sleep was impossible for
him, and that perhaps he might try to pass the hours in reading. They
talked together for a time; then Waymark lay down on the bed and
shortly slept.

He was to be at the police court in the morning. Julian would go to the
hospital as usual.

"Shall you call at home on your way?" Waymark asked him.

"No."

"But what do you mean to do?"

"I must think during the day. I shall come to-night, and you will tell
me what has happened."

So they parted, and Waymark somehow or other whiled away the time till
it was the hour for going to the court. He found it difficult to
realise the situation; so startling and brought about so suddenly.
Julian had been the first to put into words the suspicion of them both,
that it was all a deliberate plot of Harriet's; but he had not been
able to speak of his own position freely enough to let Waymark
understand the train of circumstances which could lead Harriet to such
resoluteness of infamy. Waymark doubted. But for the unfortunate fact
of Ida's secret necessities, he could perhaps scarcely have entertained
the thought of her guilt. What was the explanation of her being without
employment? Why had she hesitated to tell him, as soon as she lost her
work? Was there not some mystery at the bottom of this, arguing a lack
of complete frankness on Ida's part from the first?

The actual pain caused by Ida's danger was, strange to say, a far less
important item in his state of mind than the interest which the
situation inspired. Through the night he had thought more of Julian
than of Ida. What he had for some time suspected had now found
confirmation; Julian was in love with Ida, in love for the first time,
and under circumstances which, as Julian himself had said, might well
suffice to change his whole nature. Waymark had never beheld such
terrible suffering as that depicted on his friend's face during those
hours of talk in the night. Something of jealousy had been aroused in
him by the spectacle; not jealousy of the ordinary gross kind, but
rather a sense of humiliation in the thought that he himself had never
experienced, was perhaps incapable of, such passion as racked Julian in
every nerve. This was the passion which Ida was worthy of inspiring,
and Waymark contrasted it wit