Mrs. Hayes, he thought--if their answer were important--laughed a little nervously. "Oh you see." Once more he looked from one to the other. "It's too beastly easy, you know." Her husband raised his eyebrows. "You conceal your art. The emotion--yes; that must be easy; the general tone must flow. But about your facts--you've so many: how do you get _them_ through?" Gedge wondered. "You think I get too many----?" At this they were amused together. "That's just what we came to see!" "Well, you know, I've felt my way; I've gone step by step; you wouldn't believe how I've tried it on. _This_--where you see me--is where I've come out." After which, as they said nothing: "You hadn't thought I _could_ come out?" Again they just waited, but the husband spoke: "Are you so awfully sure you are out?" Gedge drew himself up in the manner of his moments of emotion, almost conscious even that, with his sloping shoulders, his long lean neck and his nose so prominent in proportion to other matters, he resembled the more a giraffe. It was now at last he really caught on. "I _may_ be in danger again--and the danger is what has moved you? Oh!" the poor man fairly moaned. His appreciation of it quite weakened him, yet he pulled himself together. "You've your view of my danger?" It was wondrous how, with that note definitely sounded, the air was cleared. Lucid Mr. Hayes, at the end of a minute, had put the thing in a nutshell. "I don't know what you'll think of us--for being so beastly curious." "I think," poor Gedge grimaced, "you're only too beastly kind." "It's all your own fault," his friend returned, "for presenting us (who are not idiots, say) with so striking a picture of a crisis. At our other visit, you remember," he smiled, "you created an anxiety for the opposite reason. Therefore if _this_ should again be a crisis for you, you'd really give us the case with an ideal completeness." "You make me wish," said Morris Gedge, "that it might be one." "Well, don't try--for our amusement--to bring one on. I don't see, you know, how you can have much margin. Take care--take care." Gedge did it pensive justice. "Yes, that was what you said a year ago. You did me the honour to be uneasy--as my wife was." Which determined on the young woman's part an immediate question. "May I ask then if Mrs. Gedge is now at rest?" "No--since you do ask. _She_ fears at least that I go too far; she doesn't believe in my margin. You see we _had_ our scare after your visit. They came down." His friends were all interest. "Ah! They came down?" "Heavy. They brought _me_ down. That's _why_--" "Why you _are_ down?" Mrs. Hayes sweetly demanded. "Ah but my dear man," her husband interposed, "you're not down; you're _up_! You're only up a different tree, but you're up at the tip-top." "You mean I take it too high?"