interest in _my_ case--what one wonders about, you see, is what can be done for him. I mean, that is”--for he floundered a little, not knowing at last quite what he did mean, a great rush of mere memories, a great humming sound as of thick, thick echoes, rising now to an assault that he met with his face indeed contorted. If he didn’t take care he should howl; so he more or less successfully took care--yet with his host vividly watching him while he shook the danger temporarily off. “I don’t mind--though it’s rather _that_; my having felt this morning, after three dismal dumb bad days, that one’s friends perhaps would be thinking of one. All I’m conscious of now--I give you my word--is that I’d like to see him.” “You’d like to see him?” “Oh, I don’t say,” Mark ruefully smiled, “that I should like him to see _me_--!” Newton Winch, from where he stood--and they were together now, on the great hearth-rug that was a triumph of modern orientalism--put out one of the noted fine hands and, with an expressive headshake, laid it on his shoulder. “Don’t wish him that, Monteith--don’t wish him that!” “Well, but,”--and Mark raised his eyebrows still higher--“he’d see I bear up; pretty well!” “God forbid he should see, my dear fellow!” Newton cried as for the pang of it. Mark had for his idea, at any rate, the oddest sense of an exaltation that grew by this use of frankness. “I’d go to him. Hanged if I wouldn’t--anywhere!” His companion’s hand still rested on him. “You’d go to him?” Mark stood up to it--though trying to sink solemnity as pretentious. “I’d go like a shot.” And then he added: “And it’s probably what--when we’ve turned round--I _shall_ do.” “When ‘we’ have turned round?” “Well”--he was a trifle disconcerted at the tone--“I say that because you’ll have helped me.” “Oh, I do nothing but want to help you!” Winch replied--which made it right again; especially as our friend still felt himself reassuringly and sustainingly grasped. But Winch went on: “You _would_ go to him--in kindness?” “Well--to understand.” “To understand how he could swindle you?” “Well,” Mark kept on, “to try and make out with him how, after such things--!” But he stopped; he couldn’t name them. It was as if his companion knew. “Such things as you’ve done for him of course--such services as you’ve rendered him.” “Ah, from far back. If I could tell you,” our friend vainly wailed--“if I could tell you!” Newton Winch patted his shoulder. “Tell me--tell me!” “The sort of relation, I mean; ever so many things of a kind--!” Again, however, he pulled up; he felt the tremor of his voice. “Tell me, tell me,” Winch repeated with the same movement. The tone in it now made their eyes meet again, and with this presentation of the altered face Mark measured as not before, for some reason, the extent of the recent ravage. “You must have been ill indeed.” “Pretty bad. But I’m better. And you do me good”--with which the light of convalescence came back.