“She is in London,” Wingrave answered. “I have seen her from the window this morning. You will give her a message. Say that you come from me, and that I desire to see her tomorrow. The time and place she can fix, but I should prefer not to go to her house.” Aynesworth stooped down to relight his cigarette. He felt that Wingrave was watching him, and he wished to keep his face hidden. “I am unknown to Lady Ruth,” he remarked. “Supposing she should refuse to see me?” Wingrave looked at him coldly. “I have told you what I wish done,” he said. “The task does not seem to be a difficult one. Please see to it that I have an answer by five o’clock-----” Aynesworth lunched with a few of his particular friends at the club. They heard of his new adventure with somewhat doubtful approbation. “You’ll never stand the routine, old chap!” “And what about your own work!” “What will the Daily Scribbler people say?” Aynesworth shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t imagine it will last very long,” he answered, “and I shall get a fair amount of time to myself. The work I do on the Daily Scribbler doesn’t amount to anything. It was a chance I simply couldn’t refuse.” The editor of a well-known London paper leaned back in his chair, and pinched a cigar carefully. “You’ll probably find the whole thing a sell,” he remarked. “The story, as Lovell told it, sounded dramatic enough, and if the man were to come back to life again, fresh and vigorous, things might happen, provided, of course, that Lovell was right in his suppositions. But ten or twelve years’ solitary confinement, although it mayn’t sound much on paper, is enough to crush all the life and energy out of a man.” Aynesworth shook his head. “You haven’t seen him,” he said. “I have!” “What’s he like, Walter?” another man asked. “I can’t describe him,” Aynesworth answered. “I shouldn’t like to try. I’ll bring him here some day. You fellows shall see him for yourselves. I find him interesting enough.” “The whole thing,” the editor declared, “will fizzle out. You see if it doesn’t? A man who’s just spent ten or twelve years in prison isn’t likely to run any risk of going there again. There will be no tragedy; more likely reconciliation.” “Perhaps,” Aynesworth said imperturbably. “But it wasn’t only the possibility of anything of that sort happening, you know, which attracted me. It was the tragedy of the man himself, with his numbed, helpless life, set down here in the midst of us, with a great, blank chasm between him and his past. What is there left to drive the wheels? The events of one day are simple and monotonous enough to us, because they lean up against the events of yesterday, and the yesterdays before! How do they seem, I wonder, to a man whose yesterday was more than a decade of years ago!” The editor nodded.