"The officers of the prison are fond of him and even the chief warder, a hard-bitten Guardsman, who was the principal flogger at Pentonville for many years, speaks of him affectionately. Completely untroubled--that is how I should describe Ambrose. He has been allowed the privilege of a reader, one of the warders, an educated man who acts as librarian to the prison. He has chosen Gibbon's 'Roman Empire' and on my suggestion, he is concentrating on the chapters dealing with the creation of the Byzantine Empire. The story of Belesarius fascinates him; Belesarius is a character after his own heart, as I knew would be the case. The chaplain sees him frequently and Ambrose is politely attentive. It is rather like a village schoolmaster instructing Newton in astronomy. Ambrose is so far advanced that the good man's efforts to bring him to an understanding are just a little pathetic. 'I can't understand Mr. Pinley's God,' he said to me when I called immediately after the clergyman's visit. 'He is a slave's conception of a super-master--the superstition of a fighting tribe.' Ambrose holds to his own faith, which is comprehended in Henley's poem 'Out of the dark which covers me.' He recites this continuously. "I said that he spoke of you and Christina. I asked him if he would like to see you both, knowing that if he did you would face the ordeal. But he said that it was unnecessary." On the Monday evening Christina came to the house. They did not sleep that night. "I suppose we're neurotic, but I never felt saner," said Beryl, "or more peacefully minded. And yet if it were somebody I did not know, some servant with whom I was just on nodding terms, I should be a bundle of nerves. And it is Ambrose! Christina, are we just keyed up, over-strained--shall we collapse? I have wondered." "I shall not break," said Christina, "I have been worrying about you--" Yet it was Christina on whom the chimes of the little French clock on the mantelpiece fell like the knell of doom. "--six--seven--eight--nine!" counted Beryl, tense, exalted. It was over. Ambrose Sault had gone the way. "Goodbye, Ambrose!" Christina's voice was a wail. Before Beryl could reach her, she had slipped to the floor in a dead faint. XV Ronald Morelle came down the carpeted stairs of the House of Shame, and there was a half smile on his lips, as though the echoes of laughter were still vibrating through this silent mansion and he must respond. The hall was in darkness except for the light admitted by a semi-circular transom. Turning his head, he saw that the door of the salon was ajar, and he hesitated. He had never seen the salon by daylight, only at night, when the soft lights were burning and silver chandeliers glowed with tiny yellow globes.