He sat down again and sipped some tea. Then he told the men to be seated. One stepped forward. From the breast-pocket of his tunic he took out a slip of paper and unfolded it. "You are Rupert Allen Dale?" "Yes. You have a warrant——" He checked himself. The man said something else which he did not hear. There was a buzzing in his ears. The imaginary figures on either side of his chair had grown to an enormous size. They seemed to be hemming him in. He felt stifled. Now the man was reading. Reading the warrant for Rupert Allen Dale’s arrest. He caught words here and there. "That’s all right," he said when the officer had finished. "But it’s a mistake. I’m not guilty." Again the man repeated automatically the official warning. Rupert glanced round the room. His eyes stopped at the vase of faded flowers, the red roses which Ruby had left for him.... Her thoughts, which she said would always be with him, surrounding him—in the little room where they had first known one another; known and loved one another. Again a mist rose before his eyes. He set his teeth, telling himself that he must play the man. For he had made up his mind what he was going to do, and there was nothing for it now but to do it. To do what he felt was right. Or, right or wrong, to do what heart and head prompted. "Do you mind if I finish my breakfast?" he said steadily. The officer glanced at his watch. "I can give you five minutes." Rupert made a pretence of eating. He managed to swallow a little food. He felt he wanted to remain in this room just a few minutes more. Just a common lodging-house room, that was all, but it seemed now as if the greater part of his life had been passed here. Here he had worked; here he had really lived, learnt just a little of the meaning of life. Here love had come to him for the first time. It was just as much or even more his home than Blackthorn Farm had been. He swept it with his eyes. But he did not see the common cloth nor the lodging-house breakfast service, the framed text on the wall "Home, Sweet Home," the cheap etching of one of Landseer’s pictures, or the coloured print from the Christmas number of the _Illustrated London News_. He did not see the hideous wallpaper with its green and gold pattern which had long irritated him, nor the well-worn Early-Victorian furniture. He only saw the Ghost of the Things that Had Been. The photograph of Ruby on the bureau, the vase of dead roses, and through the windows one of the turrets of Westminster Abbey. The officer cleared his throat. "I’m afraid——" Rupert rose instantly. "Will you call a cab?"