They soon emerged on to the quay. It was a superb moonlit night. The lake slumbered peacefully below, the bright expanse sweeping away from the shadows of the town, scarcely broken by a ripple. At that hour not a soul was stirring. Hockmaster's excited talk struck with sharp resonance on the lonely air. As soon as he had realized his condition of leg-helplessness, he trusted to his companion's support, and, thinking no more about it, talked volubly of the game, his winnings, his late adversary's piteous grimace, when the only losing card he could draw turned up. Then he broke out into loud laughter. “Stop that!” cried Raine, somewhat savagely, jerking his arm. Hockmaster ceased, looked up at him with lack-lustre eye. “I guess I'm drunk. Let's sit down a minute. It's my legs that don't realize their responsibility.” He pitched sideways in the direction of a seat on the quay, dragging Raine a step with him. Raine, not sorry to be free of his weight for a few moments, agreed to sit down. Perhaps the rest in the fresh air would sober him a little; at least enough to enable him to accomplish unaided the remainder of his walk home. Having lit his meerschaum, Raine gave himself up philosophically to the situation. It was just as pleasant and as profitable to be sitting there under the stars, in front of the magic of the lake, as to be fretting through anxious hours in his bedroom, longing for the morrow. For a time he forgot Hockmaster, who sprawled silently by him, his incapable legs stretched out compass-wise, and his hands in his pockets. His mind hovered around Katherine, lost itself in mingling memories of doubts and hopes; wandered back to Oxford and his uncertainties, returned to Geneva, to their first talk in the Jardin Anglais, to stray moments when they had drifted into close contact, to the glow of the first kiss, and finally settled in the gloom that her agitation that evening had spread about him. Then, with a start, he remembered the American, whose silence was alarming. “Look here. You are not going to sleep!” “All right, sonny. Don't you be alarmed,” replied Hockmaster with drunken gravity. “I am all right sitting, anyway. I've been fixing up something in my mind, and it's like shaving on board ship in a hurricane. Say, you're my friend, aren't you? If you thought I was a darned skunk, you'd tell me. “You have soaked too much brandy, my friend,” replied Raine. “That doesn't require much 'fixing up.' Anyhow, the next time you want to go on the drink, please do it when I am not there.” “Quite right,” said Hockmaster, rolling his head towards him with a portentous air. “You're disgusted at my being drunk--so'm I--But thatsh not the question. I felt sort of mean, like the chewed end of a cigar, and I tried to gargle the feeling away. But it wasn't my fault.” “Well, never mind,” said Raine, with a smile. “Don't do it again.”