o
fear of questions cropping up, and I only got out at nightfall when it
was dark enough for me to go back without risk. Since then," he said,
rising to his feet and striking the writing-table with a clenched fist,
"I have been driven close to madness. Hartley was put on to the track of
Leh Shin by the lying old Burman, Mhtoon Pah, and Leh Shin's shop was
watched and he himself threatened. God! What I've gone through."

"Thank you," said Coryndon, pushing back his chair. "You have been of
the very greatest assistance to me."

Joicey sat down again, a mere torment-racked mass, deprived of the help
of his pretence, defenceless and helpless because his sin had found him
out in the person of a slim, dark-faced man, who looked at him with
burning pity in his eyes.

The world jests at the abstract presentment of vice. From pulpits it
appears clothed in attractive words and is spoken of as alluring; and,
supported by the laughter of the idle and the stern belief of the
righteous in its charms, man sees something gallant and forbidden in
following its secret paths. The abstract view has the charm and
attraction of an impressionist picture, but once the curtain is down,
and the witness stands out with a terrible pointing finger, the laughter
of the world dies into silence, and the testimony of the preacher that
vice is provided with unearthly beauty becomes a false statement, and
man is conscious only of the degradation of his own soul.

Coryndon left the room noiselessly and returned up the steps, along the
corridor and down the stone flight that led into the subsiding heat of
the late afternoon. The young man with the smooth, affable manner
wheeled a bicycle out of a far corner, and smiled pleasantly at
Coryndon.

"You saw the Manager, and got what you wanted?"

"I saw him, and got even more than I wanted," said Coryndon, with
conviction.

Things like this puzzled the dream side of his nature and left him
exhausted. The gathering passion of rage in Joicey's eyes had not
touched him, but the memory of the big, bull-dog, defiant man huddled on
the low chair, his arm over his face, was a memory that spoke of other
things than what he had come there to discover; the terrible things that
are behind life and that have power over it. He had to collect himself
with definite force, as a child's attention is recalled to a
lesson-book.

"He has cleared Leh Shin," he said to himself, and at first exactly all
that the words mean