“The mater’s really the only thing that matters, and if I wasn’t so jolly sure that she’d like Janet awfully, and really would want me to carry the thing through, I wouldn’t do it at all. But loving Janet as I do has made me know how much the mater is to me. You know, Maradick, it’s jolly odd, but there are little things about one’s mater that stick in one’s mind far more than anything else. Little things . . . but she’s always been just everything, and there are lots of blackguards, I know, feel just the same . . . and so it sort of hurts going on playing this game and not telling her about it. It’s the first thing I’ve not told her . . . but it will be all right when it’s over.” “There are other people,” said Maradick; “your father——” “Oh, the governor! Yes, he’s beginning to smell a rat, and he’s tremendous once he’s on the track, and that all means that it’s got to be done jolly quickly. Besides, there’s Alice Du Cane; she saw us, Janet and me, on the beach this afternoon, and there’s no knowing how long she’ll keep her tongue. No, I’ll go and see Morelli to-morrow and ask him right off. I went back with her to-night, and he was most awfully friendly, although he must have had pretty shrewd suspicions. He likes me.” “Don’t you be too sure about him,” said Maradick; “I don’t half like it. I don’t trust him a yard. But see here, Tony, come and see me at once to-morrow after you’ve spoken to him, and then we’ll know what to do.” Tony turned to him and put his hand on his shoulder. “I say. I don’t know why you’re such a brick to me. I’ll never forget it”; and then suddenly he turned up the path and was gone. Maradick climbed the dark stairs to his room. His wife was in bed, asleep. He undressed quietly; for an instant he looked at her with the candle in his hand. She looked very young with her hair lying in a cloud about the pillow; he half bent down as though he would kiss her. Then he checked himself and blew out the candle. CHAPTER XIII MORE OF THE ITINERANT OPTIMIST; ALICE DU CANE ASKS MARADICK A FAVOUR Maradick awoke very early on the next morning. As he lay in his bed, his mind was still covered with the cobwebs of his dreams, and he saw the room in a fantastic, grotesque shape, so that he was not sure that it was his room at all, but he thought that it might be some sea with the tables and chairs for rocks, or some bare windy moor.