"You know what you said to me," said Purvis, looking on the floor like a man ashamed. "Of course I did, my dear fellow. Don't look so miserable about it. Well, I did my worst, and you did your worst. Now look at that!" He threw a letter to Purvis as he spoke. "Am I to read it?" "Else why did I give it you?" Purvis opened the letter and read it. It was an invitation to Mr. Castlemaine's to dinner. "Are you going?" asked Purvis. "Of course I am. Do you think I am going to let such an opportunity slip? Oh, you need not be afraid to show it to Sprague. It is not an invitation to a drawing-room meeting, it is only to a dinner." "Well, that means nothing," said Sprague. "No? I think it proves my statements to the hilt. That invitation would not have come from John Castlemaine without his daughter's consent--perhaps it was at her instigation. And yet she knows that I am--well--all you've described me to be. I am an atheist, I've thrown copybook morals overboard, I am a hard drinker. But what then? I conform to the conventions; no man has ever seen me drunk; but more than all that, I am mentioned as one who is going to have a brilliant career. Hence the invitation." "An invitation to dinner means nothing," urged Sprague. "Hence the invitation, and hence the future justification of my statements," he persisted. "Good-night, my friends, I am sorry I cannot stay longer." He walked out of the room quite gaily. A casual passer-by, if he had met him, would at that moment have thought of him as a happy man. And yet, although Sprague and Purvis did not know it, Leicester had entered the smoking-room of the club that night with a strong inclination to refuse the invitation to John Castlemaine's house. He _had_ been ashamed of making a woman the subject of a wager, and more, he had for several days been fighting against the craving for alcohol. He realised more than any man the mastery which it had gained over him, and he knew that unless he conquered the habit, he would soon be a slave to it, body and soul. An evening spent in the society of a good woman, moreover, had aroused his latent manhood, and he felt that he could not degrade himself by standing by the challenge he had made. He knew as well as they that it was made under the influence of whisky, and that no man of honour should stand by it. During the days he had been fighting his craving for drink, the thought of what he had done became more and more repugnant, and when he entered the room where Sprague and Purvis were, he intended telling them that nothing more must be said about it.