“That’s a different matter--that others but too much can do! But I’ll say this. If you want to go to Phil Bloodgood----!” “Well?” said Mark as he stopped. He stopped, and Mark had now a hand on each of his shoulders and held him at arm’s-length, held him with a fine idea that was not disconnected from the sight of the small neat weapon he had been fingering in the low luxurious morocco chair--it was of the finest orange colour--and then had laid beside him on the carpet; where, after he had admitted his visitor, his presence of mind coming back to it and suggesting that he couldn’t pick it up without making it more conspicuous, he had thought, by some swing of the foot or other casual manoeuvre, to dissimulate its visibility. They were at close quarters now as not before and Winch perfectly passive, with eyes that somehow had no shadow of a secret left and with the betrayal to the sentient hands that grasped him of an intense, an extraordinary general tremor. To Mark’s challenge he opposed afresh a brief silence, but the very quality of it, with his face speaking, was that of a gaping wound. “Well, you needn’t take _that_ trouble. You see I’m such another.” “Such another as Phil-----?” He didn’t blink. “I don’t know for sure, but I guess I’m worse.” “Do you mean you’re guilty-----?” “I mean I shall be wanted. Only I’ve stayed to take it.” Mark threw back his head, but only tightened his hands. He inexpressibly understood, and nothing in life had ever been so strange and dreadful to him as his thus helping himself by a longer and straighter stretch, as it were, to the monstrous sense of his friend’s “education.” It had been, in its immeasurable action, the education of business, of which the fruits were all around them. Yet prodigious was the interest, for prodigious truly--it seemed to loom before Mark--must have been the system. “To ‘take’ it?” he echoed; and then, though faltering a little, “To take what?” He had scarce spoken when a long sharp sound shrilled in from the outer door, seeming of so high and peremptory a pitch that with the start it gave him his grasp of his host’s shoulders relaxed an instant, though to the effect of no movement in _them_ but what came from just a sensibly intenser vibration of the whole man. “For _that_!” said Newton Winch. “Then you’ve known-----?” “I’ve expected. You’ve helped me to wait.” And then as Mark gave an ironic wail: “You’ve tided me over. My condition has _wanted_ somebody or something. Therefore, to complete this service, will you be so good as to open the door?”