The Colonel stopped him with a gesture, and, rising, crossed to a desk near the window. He unlocked a drawer, took from it a cheque-book, and drawing up a cheque in Lawless' favour, and signing it, passed it to him with a pen to fill in the amount. Lawless supplied the figures. "The usual sum," he said... "And a month in arrears." Colonel Grey nodded. Then he re-locked the desk and rose. "I have doubted you," he said. "I admit it. But--" "Oh! what in hell does it matter?" Lawless interrupted roughly. "I don't know why I have grown so suddenly sensitive on the point of my honour... And what's the use of words? You would probably skirt the question as nicely as a politician, but the fact remains--you distrust me still." Later, when he was alone, the Colonel pondered the subject for an hour while he smoked before retiring to bed. Did he absolutely distrust the man? Were not his suspicions wearing down? He had no knowledge what was wearing them--certainly not that ill-considered act on Lawless' part in throwing up the formal agreement between them. He picked up the agreement, but instead of tearing it across, he locked it away in the desk. Its repudiation had been the final struggle after the respect he had spoken of as lost to him on the part of one who had wanted above all else to stand well in this man's regard, and who felt that he had failed in that as in most things. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. It is not only in the heroic moments of life that the depth of human feeling is sounded; occasionally in the simple and seemingly commonplace incident the stress of emotion is greater than at times of a higher mental tension. Tragedy passes often unsuspected, and the eye of the casual observer rests without recognition on many intimate crises in the destiny of the race. It is well that this is so. The heart that is wounded prefers to cover its scars, and the breast that holds a sorrow carries usually a jealous dread of discovery. For the eye of the world is unsympathetic towards what it fails to understand. As the searching light of the sun reveals not only the beauties of life but all its sordid inequalities, so the judgment of humanity rests upon the obvious and appraises and condemns with relentless indiscrimination. When Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she did not eat largely enough. We recognise Good and Evil, but we miss the liner shades.