‘Yes; we are in trouble at home. My brother, who has been ill for a long time, died this morning, early.’ ‘I am very sorry indeed. Of course you would not think of coming to work, at present. It is not----’ ‘It was not to excuse myself from work that I came,’ said Myles, in the same quiet, constrained way. ‘My brother’s death is a grief to me, of course; but one does not talk about such things. I was going to trouble you on a matter of business, if you can spare the time----’ ‘Perfectly well. In what can I help you?’ Myles bit his lips. He had strong ideas about what it was fitting for a man to say and do under certain circumstances. Probably if he had formulated some of his ideas upon ethics, most sophisticated persons would have broken into inextinguishable laughter. One favourite maxim of his was that, to use his own language, ‘To blackguard a man high and low, and then go and ask a favour of him, was a mean, dirty trick; fit for a hound, perhaps, but not for an honest man.’ If he could not be said to have ‘blackguarded’ Sebastian high and low, he had certainly spoken with less than courtesy, both of him and to him; it was impossible to ignore that fact, and proceed to his real errand. ‘You may think it a very strange thing, but I’ve come to ask a favour of you,’ said he. ‘Is it strange? I shall be glad to grant it if I can.’ Myles lifted his hand a moment, and then went on, ‘You may not know that I have often spoken very bitterly of you, but you do know that I have not been particularly civil to you--have I?’ ‘Well, not exactly effusive,’ admitted Sebastian, with a slight smile, wondering whether he had at last completed his much-desired conquest. ‘It is true,’ said Myles. ‘I had a bad opinion of you--a prejudice against you--and I expressed it. If it had not been for troubles I have had lately,’ he added, with that little nervous twitch of the lips which had only lately been present with him; ‘but for those troubles, I might have gone on thinking and speaking evil of you without a cause, but my eyes have been opened. I see how utterly wrong I was--blind and bigoted. You have proved yourself a very different man from what I thought you--a very much wiser and better man than I should have been in your place--and I beg your pardon for what I have said against you.’ ‘But, my dear fellow, you must not take it so terribly in earnest; so--so tragically. Every one has his prejudices; I have some most preposterous ones, I believe. All the same, I confess to you that I was excessively piqued by your bad opinion of me. It has been a matter of some moment, with me, to overcome that prejudice, and enlist you amongst my friends. If I can say that you are amongst them now, I must feel that I have won a kind of victory.’