I needed no more explanations; and I liked Jervaise even less than I had before. I began to wish that he had not seen fit to confide in me. I had, thoughtlessly, been dramatising the incident in my mind, but, now, I was aware of the unpleasant reality of it all. Particularly Jervaise's part in it. "Can't be absolutely certain, of course," he continued. "But if she did like you?" I suggested. "I've got to be very careful who I marry," he explained. "We aren't particularly well off. All our property is in land, and you know what sort of an investment that is, these days." I tried another line. "And if you find your sister up at the Home Farm; and Banks; what are you going to do?" "Kick him and bring her home," he said decidedly. "Nothing else for it, I suppose?" I replied. "Obviously," he snarled. We had come into a wood and it was very dark under the trees. I wondered why I should restrain the impulse to strangle him and leave him there? He was no good, and, to me, quite peculiarly objectionable. It seemed, in what was then my rather fantastic state of mind, that it would be a triumph of whimsicality. I should certainly have resisted the impulse in any case, but my attention was diverted from it at that moment by a sudden pattering of feet along the leaves of the great trees under which we were walking--light, clean, sharp, little dancing feet, springing from leaf to leaf--dozens of them chasing each other, rattling ecstatically up and down the endless terraces of wide foliage. "Damn it all, it's beginning to rain like blazes," remarked the foolish Jervaise. "How much farther is it?" I asked. He said we were "just there." * * * * * I saw the Home Farm first as a little square haze of yellow light far up in the sky. I didn't realise the sharp rise in the ground immediately in front of us, and that rectangular beacon, high in the air, seemed a fantastically impossible thing. I pointed it out to Jervaise who was holding his head down as if he were afraid the summer rain might do some serious injury to his face. "Some one up, anyway," was his comment. "Very far up," I murmured. I could not quite believe, even then, that it could be a window. I was disappointed when we had climbed the hill and stood only a few feet below the beacon, to discover that this too, was another instance of the all too credible commonplace. I suppose men like Frank Jervaise never long to believe in the impossible. I was, however, agreeably surprised to find that he could be nervous. He hesitated, looking up at the prism of light that splayed out through the first floor window, and set a silver fire to the falling rain. "Suppose we'd better knock," he grumbled. "D'you know whose window it is?" I asked.