c-stricken gabble. Of all the poems which
Christine had read aloud to him, Casablanca was the only one he could
remember, and he had got as far as "whence all but he had fled" before
he saw that it was of no good. The subterfuge had been recognized.
The clergyman had stopped praying and was gazing at him earnestly.
Robert gazed back, fascinated and open-mouthed.

". . . and there is no health in us . . ."

But the strain of that encounter was too much for him. He tried to
escape, first to the ceiling and finally to his boots. The stare
pursued him, pointed at him. In a moment the whole school would be on
his track. His eyes, rolling desperately to their corners, encountered
a little dark man who had led in Form I and now stood sideways on, so
as to keep his charge under constant survey. Even in that moment of
acute despair he arrested Robert's attention. There was something odd
about him--something distressful and indignant. Whilst he prayed he
made jerky, irritable movements which fluttered out the wings of his
gown, so that with his sleek black hair and pointed face he looked like
a large angry blackbird, trapped and tied by the foot.

"But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us . . ."

And then, suddenly, an amazing conviction broke upon Robert. The
little man wasn't praying at all. His lips moved, but the movement was
all wrong. He was repeating two words, over and over again, at great
speed and with a suppressed violence. They looked familiar--painfully,
elusively familiar. Robert felt that in another moment he would
recognize them:

". . . spare Thou them that are penitent . . ."

Now Robert knew for certain. It was his father's favourite answer to
all expostulations. Of course that was it. "Damned rot--damned
rot--damned rot." The little man was swearing passionately to himself.
It was incredible, but there was no mistake possible. And in the full
blast of the discovery his dark eyes, hunted and angry-looking behind
their round glasses, met Robert's, widened, passed on, and came back
again. It was an extraordinary moment. Robert could not have looked
away to save his life. He knew that he had betrayed himself. The
little man knew that he knew. He grew very red, coughed, and blew his
nose violently, his eyes meantime returning repeatedly to Robert's
flushed and frightened face with an expression utterly unfathomable.
It was almost as though he were trying to signal----

"Amen!" declared t