tered the room behind Everard to shut the
window; then valiantly tackled the hardest task that had ever come his
way.

"Look here!" he said. "You must see that this thing can't be left where
it is."

Everard threw off the garment that encumbered him and gravely faced his
young brother-in-law.

"Yes, I do see that," he said. "I seem to have exhausted my credit all
round. It's decent of you, Tommy, to have been as forbearing as you
have. Now what is it you want to know?"

Tommy confronted him uncompromisingly. "I want to know the truth, that's
all," he said. "Can't you stop this dust-throwing business and be
straight with me?"

His tone was stubborn, his attitude almost hostile. Yet beneath it all
there ran a vein of something that was very like entreaty. And Everard,
steadily watching him, smiled--the faint grim smile of the fighter who
sees a gap in his enemy's defences.

"I'm afraid not," he said. "I don't want to be brutal, but--you see,
Tommy--it's not your business."

Tommy flinched a little, but he stood his ground. "I think you're
forgetting," he said, "that Stella is my sister. It's up to me to
protect her."

"From me?" Everard's words came swift and sharp as a sword-thrust.

Tommy turned suddenly white, but he straightened himself with a gesture
that was not without dignity. "If necessary--yes," he said.

An abrupt silence followed his words. They stood facing each other, and
the stillness between them was such that they could hear Scooter beyond
the closed window scratching against his prison-walls for freedom.

It seemed endless to Tommy. He came through it unfaltering, but he felt
physically sick, as if he had been struck in the back.

When Everard spoke at last, his hands clenched involuntarily. He half
expected violence. But there was no hint of anger about the elder man.
He had himself under iron control. His face was flint-like in its
composure, his mouth implacably grim.

"Thanks for the warning!" he said briefly. "It's just as well to know
how we stand. Is that all you wanted to say?"

The dismissal was as definite as if he had actually seized and thrown
him out of the room. And yet there was not even suppressed wrath in his
speech. It was indifferent, remote as a voice from the desert-distance.
His eyes looked upon Tommy without interest or any sort of warmth, as
though he had been a total stranger.

In that moment Tommy saw that sacred thing, their friendship, shattered
and lying i