Yet I began almost to be sorry--almost to ask why I had not swallowed Powers and accepted the invitation to dinner. Might I, in that way, have had a better chance of getting rid of Powers in the end? It would have been a wrong thing to do--I was still quite clear about that--wrong in every way, and very disgusting, to boot; quite fatal to my self-respect, and an acquiescence in a horrible want of self-respect in Jenny. But I might have been useful to her. Now I could be of no use. That evening I first set my feet on what I may perhaps call a moral slope. It looked a very gentle slope; there did not appear to be any danger in it; it did not look as though you could slip on it or as if it would be difficult to recover yourself if slip you did. But, in fact, at the bottom of that moral slope--which grew steeper as it descended--lay a moral precipice. Nothing less can I call the conclusion that anything which might be useful to Jenny Driver became, by the mere force of that possible utility, morally right--conduct, so to speak, becoming to an officer and a gentleman. I was not, of course, at all aware that my insidious doubt--or, rather, my puzzling discontent with myself--could lead to any such chasm as that. I ate my chop and tried to settle down to my books. First I tried theology, the study of which I had by no means abandoned. But I was not theologically inclined that night. Then I took up a magazine; politics emphatically would not do! I fell back on anthropology, and got on there considerably better. Yet presently my attention wandered even from that. I sat with the book open before me, at a page where three members of the Warramunga tribe were represented in adornments that, on an ordinary evening, would have filled me with admiration. No, I was languid about it. The last thing I remembered was hearing the back door locked--which meant that the Fields were going to bed. After that I fail to trace events, but I imagine that I speedily fell sound asleep--with the book open before me and my pipe lying by it on the table. I awoke with a little shiver, pretended to myself that I had never stopped reading, gave up the pretence, pushed back my chair from the table, rose, and turned to the fire behind me. In my old leather arm-chair sat Jenny Driver. She wore a black evening dress, with a cloak of brown fur thrown open in front--both, no doubt, new acquisitions. The fire had died down to a small heap of bright red embers. When first I saw her, she was crouching close over it--the night was chilly--and her face was red with its glow. "Miss Driver! I--I'm afraid I've been asleep," I stammered. "Have you been here long?" She glanced at the clock; it was half-past ten. "About twenty minutes. I've had a good look round--at your room, and your books, and that queer picture which seems to have sent you to sleep. Your room's very comfortable." "Yes, it's a jolly little room," I agreed. "But what----?"