Colin opened the door quietly, and saw the room was light, and there was Dennis sitting up in bed. His face was bright with the unexpected surprise: and he stretched out his arms. There was something appealing and timid in the gesture. “Oh, Father, how ripping!” he said. Colin was helpless in the grip of that welcome. He tried to frame his tongue to some chilling reprimand, but none came. “Dennis! Not asleep yet? And your light on? What does it mean?” he asked. The boy broke out into a little bubble of a laugh. “Why, I always keep it on till I hear you go to your room,” he said. “Why?” asked Colin. “Of course on the chance that you’d come in, as you always used to do. I knew you would sometime. Jolly glad I kept it on. Oh, come and sit down.” Against his will and his purpose Colin came up to the bed. Dennis wriggled aside to make room for him, and put up his knees for him to lean against. “I can’t stop,” said Colin, sitting down. “It’s fearfully late and you’re a villain for being awake.” “All right: I’m a villain,” said Dennis. “And you wait for me every night?” asked Colin. Dennis nodded. Just then he could not trust himself to speak, but his shining eyes spoke for him. “What shall we talk about,” asked Colin, “just for a minute?” “Oh anything: it doesn’t matter a bit, as long as it’s you.” At that moment Colin was happy. But he had hardly realized that, before, just as he had heard the night-wind coming up and whispering in the trees by the lake, he knew that there was approaching the blast of hate and evil which he had tried to conjure up in the chapel. He leant towards Dennis, put his arm round his neck and kissed him. “Good night, old boy,” he said. “I won’t stop now. Sleep well.” “Ever so well,” said Dennis. Colin clicked out the light, and went to his room. Already his brain seethed with images of evil, vivid and alluring, and fierce at this treason of his. They swarmed like a loyal garrison to that breach in his defences where Dennis had stood, and drove him off. They urged Colin to pursue, to go back to the boy’s room, to let loose on him their assault, to defile and desecrate his innocence, to show him the ecstasy of evil, the charm of cruelty. What matter if panic or horror made nightmare round him? He would wake from them with new currents coursing in his veins, new desires stinging him to their fulfilment. Where was the good of his being heir to the legend if he did not enter into his birthright?