‘I should have thought the fever had come back,’ said Geff, ‘if I had not had my finger on his pulse two minutes before. “Your Varsity man, Mike--what are you talking about?” I asked him. “What have you to do with the University or its men?” “I had to do,” he said, “with a Varsity man one accursed November night that _you_ must remember, doctor. There was a lot of chaps together, rough river chaps--you know the sort, sir--and three or four of the Varsity gentlemen came across ’em, down Petty Cury. The gentlemen wasn’t of the fighting kind, so far as I can recollect, but anyways they got into a Town and Gown row--a bad one.... Doctor, I say”--the poor fellow put out his big weak hand to me--“I was the leader of the roughs. I struck a foul coward’s blow when the gentlemen was fighting honourable and unarmed. It was me give you the devil’s mark you’ll take with you into the coffin.”’ ‘Scélérat--misérable!’ put in Pouchée, between her closed teeth. ‘I tried to joke him out of his fancy,’ went on Geff Arbuthnot, ‘but in vain. Mike had seen my face, before he struck the blow--and afterwards. He had never forgotten me. The scar which you, Mademoiselle, have lamented over, as marring my beauty, put my identification beyond doubt. “My Varsity man--my Varsity man,” he moaned. “I’ve thought of him many a time in the black years since.... And now, at last, I’ve found him. Doctor, you’ve saved my life--you’ve looked after me when I should have died, else, like a dog on this miserable floor, here--there’s one favour more I durstn’t, no, I durstn’t ask of you.... Give me your hand in token of forgiveness.”’ ‘And you gave it him,’ cried Pouchée, whose face had turned a queer shade of colour as she listened. ‘I gave him my hand, and Mike, who I suspect has cared neither for God nor man in his life, caught it to his lips. My dear Mademoiselle, you can guess that it was a good moment. To pull one’s patient round, in body, is much. O’Halloran will have a human heart in that dark breast of his from to-day forth.’ And having told his story, Geff Arbuthnot rose. With a lingering look he took in the home-like suggestiveness of the little salon, the violets on the mantelshelf, the morsel of embroidery, the slender implements of needlework on the table. Then he bade Mademoiselle Pouchée good-night. Marjorie listened while his remembered step ran up the stairs, listened until she knew by the opening and shutting of a distant door that he had gained his study. Then she crept forth, uncertain of mien, from her hiding-place. ‘Have I committed a dishonourable action? Was there anything I should not have heard? Oh, Mademoiselle,’ she went on, incoherently, ‘is not Geoffrey Arbuthnot the noblest man in the whole world?’ And Marjorie clasped the mantelshelf, steadying herself thereby. She bent down over a cup of violets, hiding the face from which she felt all trace of colour must have vanished.