He placed the ring before her on the table. 'There is the ruby.' 'Take it.' 'Do you mean that?' 'I do. If it is of the slightest use to you, by all means take it.' 'You give it to me--freely?' 'Oh, yes, so freely! Only--I wish you'd go.' Thrusting the ruby into his waistcoat pocket, he went, without another word. Without it seemed darker even than before. He stumbled, blindly, down the stairs. Presently the darkness lightened; a gleam descended from above. Glancing up he perceived that Miss Bewicke was leaning over the railing with a lighted candle in her hand. He said nothing; attempted no word of thanks. So far as he knew she, too, was still; but as he descended, assisted by the light she held, he felt as he was convinced the whipped cur must feel, which sneaks off with its tail between its legs. The candle was still showing a faint glimmer of light as he passed into the street. He applied a dozen injurious epithets to himself as he thought that he had not even acknowledged the courtesy he had received. But for the life of him he could not, at that moment, have uttered a word of thanks. Now that he was out in the street he raged. In his first mad impulse he would have taken what Miss Bewicke had called his 'booty' from his pocket and hurled it from him through the night. Prudence, however, prevailed. He told himself, again and again, that he was an ineffable thing to allow it to remain a second longer in his possession. It stayed there all the same. He was conscious that nothing could be less romantic than the whole adventure; nothing more undignified than the part which he had played in it. He had been throughout a mere figurehead--a counter manipulated by three women--he who thought that if he had anything on which to pride himself it was his manhood. His rage waxed hotter as he strode along; he was angry even with Miss Broad. 'If it hadn't been for her--' he began. Then stopped, stood still, struck with his fist at the air--his stick, it seemed, he had left behind him. 'What a cur I am! I try to put the blame, like some snivelling sneak of a schoolboy, upon everyone except myself, as though the fault was not mine, and mine alone. Am I some weak idiot that I am not responsible for my own actions? that I do a dirty thing, and then exclaim that someone made me? Well, it's done, and can't be undone, and I stand, self-confessed, a hound; but, as I live, I'll return at once and make her take the ruby back again. Then off once more for Africa. Better to be haunted by my uncle's ghost than by my own conscience.'