"Yes," Rendel said. "I quite see your position, and I know that you have a right to resent mine, but all I can say is that--" he stopped, then went on again with firmer accents, "I don't suppose I can expect you to believe me, but as a matter of fact I can't begin to conceive the possibility of knowingly handing on to some one else such a secret as that." "Knowingly," said Stamfordham, "perhaps not," and he waited, to give Rendel one more chance of speaking. But Rendel was silent. Then Stamfordham went on in a different tone and with a perceptibly harsher note in his voice. "My time is so precious that I am afraid if you have nothing further to tell me there is no good in prolonging the interview." "Perhaps not," said Rendel, who was deadly white, and he made a motion as though to go. "Do you realise," said Stamfordham, "what this will mean to you?" "Yes," said Rendel, "I do." "Of course," said Stamfordham, "what I ought to do is to insist on the inquiry being continued until the matter is cleared up and brought to light." A strange expression passed over Rendel's face as there rose in his mind a feeling that he instantly thrust out of sight again, that supposing--supposing--Stamfordham himself investigated to the bottom all that had happened, and that without any doing of his, Rendel's, the truth were discovered? Then with horror he put the idea away. Rachel! it would give Rachel just as great a pang, of course, whoever found it out. The flash of impulse and recoil had passed swiftly through his mind before he woke up, as it were, to find Stamfordham continuing-- "But I am willing for your sake to stop here." Rendel tried to make some acknowledgment, but no words that he could speak came to his lips. "It might, as I told you before," Stamfordham went on, standing up as though to show that the interview was over, "have been a national disaster. That, however, has, I hope, been averted, and we shall simply have done now something we meant to do a few days hence. But that does not affect the point we have been discussing," and he looked at Rendel as though with a forlorn hope that at the last moment he might speak. But Rendel was silent still. "You understand, then," Stamfordham said, looking him straight in the face, an embodiment of inexorable justice, "what this means to a man in your position?" "Yes," said Rendel again. "I owe my colleagues an explanation," said Stamfordham. "Since one is not to be had, I must repeat to them what has passed between us." "Of course," said Rendel. And he went towards the door. "There is another thing I must ask you," Stamfordham said, speaking with cold courtesy. "I have a letter here about Stoke Newton. It will have to be settled." And he waited for Rendel to answer the question which had not been explicitly asked. "I shall not stand," said Rendel. "That is best," said Stamfordham quietly. "Will you telegraph to the Committee, then?"