off anything,” and so it would be the younger brother of Hector-not-so-proud who must die, who must have died, thoughtfully trying to tempt his mother into the carelessness of death. The lay-sister had gone into the other room, which must have been a sort of kitchen, and Napier had taken her chair. He sat there, shadowed with whiteness, scowling into the black tin box. “I see,” I said. “Of course....” I made him take the letter back, and suddenly he looked up at me intently. He’d find out something, he would. “She is dying, isn’t she? You’re certain yourself, aren’t you? What?” “The doctor should be in in a moment, and you can ask him. No, I don’t think she’s dying. My sister had the same sort of thing, and she’s dancing at the moment--” “Same sort of--what thing, then? What?” A _gaffe_, a _faux pas_, a bloomer! He scowled up at me, blackly intent.... “Ptomaine poisoning,” I said. “Oh, God!” he said. “Oh, God! What? Poison....” He stared at the letter which I had put into his hand. He turned it about, and seemed to think profoundly. “You see,” he muttered, “it’s all wrong, this. All wrong. What?” I wasn’t cast for a moralist. What I said, very uncomfortably, was: “Well....” “All this messing about,” Napier scowled at the letter. Then he looked at me, darkly, helplessly. “Get let in for things,” he said. “Difficult,” I said. “I know....” “God, isn’t it! Difficult.... What? I mean, when you want to be ... well, when you want to live clean. We promised, oh God, yes! not to write, never to meet.... Must live clean, you see. What? There isn’t, when you come to think of it, any other way _to_ live....” “Guy says that....” “Guy? Yes, but ... need guts like Guy’s, don’t you? What? Look here,” he suddenly waved the letter at me, “will you go out and keep Venice company for a moment? I mean, see what she’s doing? And I’ll see the doctor fellow and make him let me see Iris for a moment. Promise wiped out by approach of death.... What? I mean, lonely for her here.... Told me, last time I saw her that she was lonely. Hurts, loneliness. What? And then I find her in this hole....” He thrust the letter into his gaping coat-pocket. I could see it there, that pencilled scrawl. Letters, letters, letters like radium-bombs, left lying about for years, then bursting. What fools men were, keeping letters ... travelling about with them, sticking them into their coat-pockets. Suppose Venice saw that letter ... just a few lines of it. Whether Iris lived or died ... suppose Venice saw just a few lines of that letter. For Venice.... “Napier,” I said. He stared at me, extraordinarily handsome at that moment, and I remember thinking just then of what is always said, that women are not very attracted by good-looking men. But what is always said must be wrong. “I say,” he said, “got a cigarette? What?” “Napier,” I said, “give me that letter....” “Or,” I said, “have two matches to your cigarette....”