f the
forbidding-looking four-post bedstead.

What motive prompted him to the action he could scarcely have defined.
He was strangely moved by the scene just gone through--stirred in a
manner he could never have anticipated. For the moment the precise,
matter-of-fact archaeologist was submerged; and the man--dry, narrow,
pedantic perhaps, but nevertheless capable of human sentiments--was
uppermost. The sight of Asshlin, the sound of his voice, and the touch
of his hand had possessed an alchemy all their own. The past, that
years of separation had dimmed and tarnished, had gleamed out from the
shadows and taken shape before his eyes. The influence, the fascination
that Asshlin had once exercised, had touched him again at the first
contact of personalities. But it was an altered fascination. The alloy
of doubt and apprehension had tainted the old feeling. The question he
had been prompted to ask Burke had answered itself at the first glimpse
of his host's face. Indisputably, unmistakably, Asshlin had changed.

And in what lay that change? That was the question he put to himself as
he sat on the bed, unconsciously noting the long, wavering flicker of
the candle-flame against the faded wall-paper. He had aged; but the
change did not lie with age alone. Something more relentless and more
corroding than time had drawn the worn, discontented lines about the
mouth, kindled the unnatural, restless glitter in the eyes, and changed
the note of the voice from spontaneous vitality to recklessness. The
change lay deeper; it lay in the heart and the soul of the man himself.

With a sensation of doubt--of puzzled doubt and inexplicable
disappointment--he rose, crossed the room, and, drawing the curtains
over the windows, shut out the dark, damp night.

CHAPTER III

It was nearly three-quarters of an hour later that a tremendous bell,
clanging through the house, announced that dinner had been served.

A wash, a change of clothes, and a half-hour of solitude had done much
for Milbanke. He felt more normal, less alienated by unfamiliar
surroundings than he had done in the first confused moments that had
followed his arrival. The vague sense of disappointment and
apprehension, the vague suspicion that Asshlin had undergone an immense
alteration still tormented him--as half-apprehended evils ever torment
the minds of those who see and study life as a thing apart from human
nature; but the immediate effect of the feeling was le