David took it. It spoke of the letter written by Hughes to a boy in the house, a letter disgusting and conclusive. . . . Then it spoke of the disgrace Hughes had brought on himself, and the misery he had brought on his father and mother. He read it and gave it back to Frank. “Well, I’m awfully sorry, just as you are,” he said; “but if fellows will be brutes——Old Adams seems no end cut up about it. But somehow, I’d ceased to be pals with Hughes. Where’s the Swinburne?” But still Frank did not answer, and David knitted puzzled brows. “What’s up?” he said. Maddox turned over on to his back, and tilted his hat over his eyes till his face was invisible. “I might have been Hughes,” he said. Again the memory of what David always turned his face from came into his mind. “Oh, rot,” he said lamely, hating the subject. Maddox was silent a moment. “’Tisn’t quite rot,” he said. “But then there came a thing, which I dare say you’ve forgotten, only I haven’t. You came in from playing squash one wet afternoon, and you and your innocence made me suddenly see what a beast I was.” David could not help giving a little shudder, but the moment after he was ashamed of it. “I don’t care what you were like before,” he said. “But what I’m perfectly sure of is that since then—I remember it very well—you’ve been all right.” “Yes.” “There you are, then!” said David. Frank was still lying with his hat over his face, but now he pushed it back and looked at David. “It’s all serene for you,” he said, “because you’ve always been a straight chap. But it’s different for me. I feel just rotten.” David scratched his head in some perplexity. The whole matter was vague and repugnant to him, and he did not want to hear more or know more. There were such heaps of jolly proper things in the world to be interested in and curious about. But he understood without any vagueness at all and with the very opposite of repulsion, that his friend was in trouble, and that he wanted sympathy with that. So the whole of his devoted little heart went out there. It was bad trouble, too, the worst trouble a fellow could have. “It must be perfectly beastly for you,” he said, “and I’m as sorry as I can be. But you’re sorry yourself, and what more can a chap do? If you weren’t sorry it would be different. There’s another thing too, to set against what you’ve done, and that’s how you’ve behaved to me. You’ve been an absolute brick to me. You’ve kept that sort of filth away from me: I know you have.”