Without a word Julian strode past him into the manager’s room, and then, as Ramsay shut the door calmly, he said, in a quick, unnatural tone, which also carried with it a curious suggestion that he had not even heard Ramsay’s words: “It’s a mistake! It’s a mistake! It must be!” Ramsay’s only answer was a slight shrug of the shoulders as his dull eyes rested, apparently with complete indifference, upon Julian’s face; and the latter went on, rapidly and unevenly: “I’ve only just heard. I’ve been out of town all day. I’ve come to hear--to see what can be done.” The last words were hardly audible, as though his mouth was so parched that he could hardly articulate. He lifted his hand as if involuntarily, and pushed back his hat, fixing a pair of fierce, burning eyes upon Ramsay. “There’s nothing to be done, of course,” said Ramsay drily. “The thing’s collapsed.” A harsh, wild laugh rang through the room, its faint echoes startling the little man in the outer office. “Collapsed!” cried Julian. “Collapsed, by Heaven!” He put out one hand gropingly, caught at a chair near him and dropped heavily into it, letting his face fall forward upon his folded arms as they rested upon its back. Only half an hour had passed since he had gone to his rooms in the Temple after a picnic on the river, to find waiting for him there a telegram from Ramsay. And into that half-hour had been compressed such a desperate stand against despair as is little less terrible than despair itself. The telegram had told him that on the opening of the Stock Exchange that morning it had been spread abroad on unimpeachable authority that the Welcome Diamond Mine was under water. This evening, the inevitable sequel of such a fact, as he knew too well, shares in the Welcome Diamond Mining Company were so much waste-paper. Ramsay stood for a moment looking at him, with a rather curious expression on his inexpressive face. “It’s a turn of the game,” he said drily. “If you stand to win, you must stand to lose, too. You hadn’t thought of that, I suppose?” With a sudden tumultuous movement, as though his agony of mind was no longer to be endured in stillness, Julian sprang from his chair and began to walk up and down the room with hasty, uneven strides. “Thought of it!” he cried. “What was there to make one think of it? It was a certainty yesterday, man; a certainty!” A spasm passed across his face, and seemed to cut off his words, and Ramsay observed sententiously: “It’s a mistake to reckon anything as a certainty till you hold it in your hand.” Julian faced round suddenly and confronted him, his eyes blazing, every feature working. “What the devil is the good of saying things like that?” he demanded. “Can’t you understand that I have reckoned on it, as you call it? Can’t you understand that it was all or nothing with me, and I am just done? Can’t you understand----”