Heloise was staying at the Majestic (if it was still open). Gordon would arrange for rooms at the Splendid--with the same contingency. They were to meet after breakfast every morning and lunch together at a little café on Place des Armes. On one day they would go to Bruges together and see the pictures. A tour of the Littoral was a possibility. Between whiles there were books to be discussed, the lectures of a brand-new exponent of a brand-new philosophy to be attended. He held what may be described as an ethical clinic at Mariakirk and was the original excuse for the trip. A party of Thinkers was projected to sit at the feet of De Waal (that was his name) and learn laboriously the difference between right and wrong, right being what had hitherto appeared to be wrong, and wrong being proved, by the new school of thought and its principal exegete, to be so absurdly right that the wonder was that nobody had seen it all along. The party had fallen through. The new Master had been discredited by a newer, a German who demonstrated that there was neither right nor wrong in any kind of question whatsoever. Gordon’s dilemma was born of this projected Pilgrimage of Reason, and one aspect of the holiday worried him: the possibility of something happening which would make it imperative that he should be communicated with. In reality this was the strongest argument against the trip. Only by taking somebody into his confidence could such an adventure be undertaken. Diana was, of course, impossible. Gordon pinched his lip and rehearsed the terms in which he would convey to his agent the exact character of his journey. His attempt to put into words so remarkable and so unbelievable a project left him with a cold sense of dismay. Of all the people he thought likely he started with Bobbie; he also ended with Bobbie. Robert G. Selsbury had an office on Mark Lane, where, from ten o’clock in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon, he bought and sold tea, coffee and sugar to his own considerable profit. Gordon had only been to the office once. He thought it was rather stuffy and rather redolent of the two principal commodities in which Bobbie dealt. His own office in Queen Victoria Street was both rich and chaste and odourless, except for the faint fragrance of lavender--Gordon was strong for germicides, and that mostly employed to destroy the ravaging microbe had that suggestion of the lavender fields. Bobbie never came to see his brother without the sense that he ought to be wearing a boudoir cap and bedroom slippers. The principal stockholder of R. G. Selsbury Ltd. was examining a sample of china tea when his brother was announced. “Mr. Gordon?” asked Bobbie incredulously, and when the girl confirmed the tidings: “Push him in,” he said, and Gordon, who would have resented even the gentlest of pushes, entered unaided. “What’s the matter?” asked Bobbie.