‘Who are you? Tell me. I should very much like to know.’ ‘Ah, that’s my secret,’ laughed the young man. And mockingly he put the flageolet to his lips and played a few bars, the _motif_ of his melody. ‘Wait, please,’ cried Paradyne. ‘You interest me enormously. I can’t let you go without----I shan’t be a moment.’ He turned the corner, crossed the lawn, and entered the house through the French window of the study. When he returned, Treasury note in hand, the musician had disappeared. He opened the wooden gate of the circular entrance drive and looked up and down the road in vain search for the musician. Sleep was impossible. It was a hot night in early June. Through his brain rang the tantalizing music. He rose. ‘I’m going crazy,’ said he. ‘I must walk it off.’ Never had he done such a thing in his decorous life as to get out of bed and take a midnight walk. But now he did it. He clad himself in his golfing things, laid ready to his hand, and going through his study, locking the door behind him and putting the key in his pocket, he marched out. He marched out along the white respectable road bordered by the grounds of respectable villas, swinging his stick, with a feeling of schoolboy freedom. And, suddenly, in the distance he heard the abominable tune. [Illustration: HE MARCHED ON ALONG THE WHITE, RESPECTABLE ROAD] And then? And, then, all was blank. Behind that and his present awakening, blank, nothingness, darkness, what you will. [Illustration] He argued it out in lawyer-fashion. There was the young man’s silver flageolet on the grass. That meant that he must have overtaken him and by some means got possession of the instrument. Possibly he had wandered some distance in his company, and had fainted by the way. He realized that he had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown. What more simple explanation than that, he cracking up altogether, his friend had stuffed him into this gipsy caravan, while he and the owner had gone off to the nearest town for medical assistance? So it was Sunday morning after all, and his walking terror lest he should have missed his Monday application before the Judge was futile. ‘Splendid,’ said he, ‘splendid!’ He rose and thrust his hands into the pockets of his Norfolk jacket. In the left-hand pocket he felt the key of his study window. He laughed aloud and called himself a silly ass. It was now broad daylight. A wooden gate a few yards ahead of him opened, and a small girl in a blue smock emerged, holding in her hand a bottle of milk. She came towards him and piped childishly: ‘_Voici le lait, Monsieur._’ ‘What?’ It was a roar of bewilderment at which the child shrank back, frightened. [Illustration: “WHY CHARTRES, MONSIEUR, TEN KILOMETRES?”] ‘_C’est le lait que Monsieur a commandé, hier soir._’ ‘My God,’ said he. ‘_C’est six sous, Monsieur_,’ said the child, holding out her hand.