ateurs were amateurs and sport was sport; there were no Raffleses in
first-class cricket then. I had forgotten Raffles was a modern
first-class cricketer: that explains him. Rather than see my son such
another, do you know what I'd prefer to see him?"

I neither knew nor cared: yet a wretched premonitory fascination held
me breathless till I was told.

"I'd prefer to see him a thief!" said Nasmyth savagely; and when his
eyes were done with me, he turned upon his heel. So that ended that
stage of my discomfiture.

It was only to give place to a worse. Was all this accident or fell
design? Conscience had made a coward of me, and yet what reason had I
to disbelieve the worst? We were pirouetting on the edge of an abyss;
sooner or later the false step must come and the pit swallow us. I
began to wish myself back in London, and I did get back to my room in
our old house. My dancing days were already over; there I had taken
the one resolution to which I remained as true as better men to better
vows; there the painful association was no mere sense of personal
unworthiness. I fell to thinking in my room of other dances ... and
was still smoking the cigarette which Raffles had taught me to
appreciate when I looked up to find him regarding me from the door. He
had opened it as noiselessly as only Raffles could open doors, and now
he closed it in the same professional fashion.

"I missed Achilles hours ago," said he. "And still he's sulking in his
tent!"

"I have been," I answered, laughing as he could always make me, "but
I'll chuck it if you'll stop and smoke. Our host doesn't mind; there's
an ash-tray provided for the purpose. I ought to be sulking between
the sheets, but I'm ready to sit up with you till morning."

"We might do worse; but, on the other hand, we might do still better,"
rejoined Raffles, and for once he resisted the seductive Sullivan. "As
a matter of fact, it's morning now; in another hour it will be dawn;
and where could day dawn better than in Warfield Woods, or along the
Stockley road, or even on the Upper or the Middle? I don't want to
turn in, any more than you do. I may as well confess that the whole
show down here has exalted me more than anything for years. But if we
can't sleep, Bunny, let's have some fresh air instead."

"Has everybody gone to bed?" I asked.

"Long ago. I was the last in. Why?"

"Only it might sound a little odd, our turning out again, if they were
to hear us."

Raffles s