The spare room bell rang. Herbert had a painful struggle between curiosity and duty, for the bell for chapel was ringing also, and he must go through the drizzle to school. He promised to come up in the interval. Rickie, who had rapped his head that Sunday on the edge of the table, was still forbidden to work. Before him a quiet morning lay. Secure of his victory, he took the portrait of their mother in his hand and walked leisurely upstairs. The bell continued to ring. “See about his breakfast,” he called to Agnes, who replied, “Very well.” The handle of the spare room door was moving slowly. “I’m coming,” he cried. The handle was still. He unlocked and entered, his heart full of charity. But within stood a man who probably owned the world. Rickie scarcely knew him; last night he had seemed so colorless, no negligible. In a few hours he had recaptured motion and passion and the imprint of the sunlight and the wind. He stood, not consciously heroic, with arms that dangled from broad stooping shoulders, and feet that played with a hassock on the carpet. But his hair was beautiful against the grey sky, and his eyes, recalling the sky unclouded, shot past the intruder as if to some worthier vision. So intent was their gaze that Rickie himself glanced backwards, only to see the neat passage and the banisters at the top of the stairs. Then the lips beat together twice, and out burst a torrent of amazing words. “Add it all up, and let me know how much. I’d sooner have died. It never took me that way before. I must have broken pounds’ worth. If you’ll not tell the police, I promise you shan’t lose, Mr. Elliot, I swear. But it may be months before I send it. Everything is to be new. You’ve not to be a penny out of pocket, do you see? Do let me go, this once again.” “What’s the trouble?” asked Rickie, as if they had been friends for years. “My dear man, we’ve other things to talk about. Gracious me, what a fuss! If you’d smashed the whole house I wouldn’t mind, so long as you came back.” “I’d sooner have died,” gulped Stephen. “You did nearly! It was I who caught you. Never mind yesterday’s rag. What can you manage for breakfast?” The face grew more angry and more puzzled. “Yesterday wasn’t a rag,” he said without focusing his eyes. “I was drunk, but naturally meant it.” “Meant what?” “To smash you. Bad liquor did what Mrs. Elliot couldn’t. I’ve put myself in the wrong. You’ve got me.” It was a poor beginning. “As I have got you,” said Rickie, controlling himself, “I want to have a talk with you. There has been a ghastly mistake.”