thought, for a while, we
had lost you!'

"Then I knew that he dared not be alone, and that I had him, whatever
happened."

NIGHT THE TWENTIETH.

ONE MAN ESCAPES.

Before continuing Foe's story, I should warn you not to be surprised
that hereabouts it takes on a somewhat different tone. I am trying
to give you the tale as he told it: and so much of it as related to
Santa, he told bravely and frankly, here and there with a thrill
somewhere deep beneath his voice, and exaltation on his face.
He was, in short, the Jack Foe of old days, opening out his heart to
me; and all the more the same because he was different. By this I
mean that never in life had I heard him speak in just that way,
simply because never in life had he brought me this kind of emotion,
to confess it; but, granted the woman and the love, here (I felt) was
the old Jack opening his heart to me. It rejuvenated his whole
figure, too, and, in a way, ennobled it. I forgot--or rather, I no
longer saw--the change in him which had given me that secondary shock
when he walked into the room.

I cannot tell you the precise point at which his tone altered, and
grew hard, defiant, careless and--now and then at its worst--even
flippant. But it was here or hereabouts, and you will guess the
reason towards the end.

Another thing I must mention. You have already guessed that the
tale was not told at one sitting. Between the start and the point
where I broke off last night, we had lunched, taken a stroll
Piccadilly-wards, done some shopping, and chatted on the way about
various friends and what had happened to them in this while--Jack
questioning, of course, while I did almost all the talking. It was
in the emptying Park, as we sat and watched the carriages go by, that
he told me of Santa's burial and what followed it, so far as you have
heard. I broke off last time at the point where he broke off, stood
up, and said he would tell me the end of it all over dinner at the
Cafe Royal, where we had called, on the way, to reserve our old
table.

I saw afterwards why he had arranged it so: as you will see. But for
the present it only needs remembering that what follows was told in a
brilliant, rather noisy room--at an isolated table, but with a throng
of diners all around us.

I had ordered wild duck as part of the dinner: and when it came to be
served he looked hard at his plate, and, without lifting his eyes,
slid from casual talk into his narrati