“Yes, he’s a nice man,” she nodded. “I don’t know a great deal about him; indeed, I’ve only met him once or twice, but he was very kind to Ray, and saved him from getting into trouble. I am wondering whether, now that he is rich, he will induce Ray to go back to Maitlands.” “I wonder if he will induce you——” He stopped. “Induce me to what?” she asked in astonishment. “Johnson is rather fond of you—he’s never made any disguise of the fact, and he’s a very rich man. Not that I think that would make any difference to you,” he added hastily. “I’m not a very rich man, but I’m comfortably off.” The fingers in his hand stole round his, and pressed them tightly, and then suddenly they relaxed. “I don’t know,” she said, and drew herself free. “Father said——” She hesitated. “I don’t think father would like it. He thinks there is such a difference between our social positions.” “Rats!” said Dick inelegantly. “And there’s something else.” She found it an effort to tell him what that something was. “I don’t know what father does for a living, but it is . . . work that he never wishes to speak about; something that he looks upon as disgraceful.” The last words were spoken so low that he hardly caught them. “Suppose I know the worst about your father?” he asked quietly, and she stood back, looking at him from under knit brows. “Do you mean that? What is it, Dick?” He shook his head. “I may know or I may not. It is only a wild guess. And you’re not to tell him that I know, or that I’m in any way suspicious. Will you please do that for me?” “And knowing this, would it make any difference to you?” “None.” She had plucked a flower, and was pulling it petal from petal in her abstraction. “Is it very dreadful?” she asked. “Has he committed a crime? No, no, don’t tell me.” Once more he was near her, his arm about her trembling shoulders, his hand beneath her chin. “My dear!” murmured the youthful Public Prosecutor, and forgot there was such a thing as murder in the world. John Bennett was glad to see him, eager to tell the news of his triumph. He had a drawer full of press cuttings, headed “Wonderful Nature Studies. Remarkable Pictures by an Amateur,” and others equally flattering. And there had come to him a cheque which had left him gasping. “This means—you don’t know what it means to me, Mr. Gordon,” he said, “or Captain Gordon—I always forget you’ve got a military title. When that boy of mine recovers his senses and returns home, he’s going to have just the good time he wants. He’s at the age when most boys are fools—what I call the showing-off age. Sometimes it runs to pimples and introspection, sometimes to the kind of life that a man doesn’t like to look back on. Ray has probably taken the less vicious course.” It was a relief to hear the man speak so. Dick always thought of Ray Bennett as one who had committed the unforgiveable sin.