Desmond flung up his head with an odd laugh. "Possibly not! But there happen to be degrees of unfitness--yours and mine for instance, you blind old bat! Go along now, and enjoy the good you deserve. As for me--I have sinned and must take the consequences without whining." "There is a radical difference, Theo," Paul remarked quietly, "between temptation and sin." "Casuist!" was all the answer vouchsafed to him; and baffled--but not yet defeated--he went out into the May sunlight, quite determined, for once in his life, to take by storm the citadel that seemed proof against capitulation. Before reaching his destination he had devised a plan so simple and obvious that it might have occurred to a child; and like a child he gloried in his unaided achievement. The fact that it involved leading them both blindfold to the verge of mutual discovery troubled him not a whit. Heart and conscience alike asserted that in this case the end justified the means; and it needed but the veiled light in Honor's eyes at mention of Theo's name to set the seal on his decision. For near an hour they talked, with that effortless ease and intimacy which is the hail-mark of a genuine friendship; and at the end of it Honor realised that, without any conscious intention on her part, Theo--and little else but Theo--had been their topic as a matter of course. Never dreaming of design on the part of Paul, she merely blessed him for a devotion that almost equalled her own, and accepted, with unfeigned alacrity, his suggestion that they should meet next morning at the Diploma Gallery. "I've not been there for a hundred years!" she declared with more of her old lightness than he had yet seen in her: "It will take me back to bread-and-butter days! And I believe they have added some really good pictures since then." Paul exulted as an angler exults when he feels his first salmon tug at the line; but his tone was casual and composed. "Come early," he said. "Then we shall pretty well have the place to ourselves. Eleven? Half-past?" "Somewhere between the two." "Good." And Paul Wyndham--the devout lover, who had trampled passion underfoot to some purpose--walked back to Piccadilly like a man reprieved. Honor was secure. Remained the capture of Theo--a more difficult feat; but, in his present mood, he refused to contemplate the possibility of failure. * * * * * A morning of unclouded brilliance found Desmond frankly bored with tactics and topography; the more so, perhaps, because Paul with simple craft took his industry for granted. Soon after eleven, he put aside the inevitable pipe and newspaper and took up his hat. "Well, Theo," said he, "you won't be needing me till after lunch I suppose?--I'm off." "Where to, old man?" Desmond yawned extensively as he spoke, and pushed aside his little pile of red books with a promising gesture of distaste. "What's your dissipated programme?"