"Steady, steady," said Kenyon. "We don't want a scene here." "Scene be damned. I tell you something's got to break." The Japanese ducked into the coat-room. "Where's Peter?" Graham looked back expecting to see his brother's head and shoulders above the crowd. There was no sign of him. By accident the lime-light which had been suddenly turned on for a new performance fell on Peter as he was marching towards the door of the studio. Instantly he found himself surrounded by half a dozen good-natured men who had all taken a little too much to drink. They, like the other people present, were in Egyptian clothes and obviously glad to see in Peter a healthy normal specimen of humanity. "Oh, hello, brother, where are you off to?" asked one. "Out!" said Peter shortly. "I'll be darned if you are. Come and have a drink!" "No, thanks, I've other things to do." "Oh, rot! Be a sport and stay and help us to stir things up. Come on, now!" Peter tried to push his way through. "Please get out of the way," he said. But a jovial red-headed fellow got into it. "You're staying, if I have to make you." Something snapped in Peter's brain. Before he could control himself he bent down and picked up the man by the scruff of his neck and the cloth that was wound round his middle and heaved him over the heads of the crowd into a divan, and then hitting out right and left cleared a path to the door, leaving chaos and bleeding noses behind him. Without waiting to get his hat and coat he made a dash for the elevator, caught it just as it was about to descend and went down to the main floor dishevelled and panting. Out in the street he saw Kenyon trying to put Graham into a taxicab. Kenyon saw him and called out. "Come on, or Papowsky will make it hot for us." On his way home from a late evening at one of his clubs, Ranken Townsend caught the name Papowsky, whose evil reputation had come to his ears. He threw a quick glance at the men who were leaving her place and saw that one of them was Peter. He drew up and stood in front of the man in whom he thought he had recognized cleanness and excellence and told himself that he was utterly mistaken. "So this was your precious business engagement," he said, with icy contempt. "Well, I don't give my daughter to a man who shares her with women like Papowsky, so you may consider yourself free. Good night." And the smile that turned up the corners of Kenyon's mouth had in it the epitome of triumph. All along the line he had won. All along the line. Peter watched the tall disappearing figure. He felt as though he had been kicked in the mouth. PART THREE LIFE I That night was one of the most extraordinary that Peter ever spent. Although he was smarting under the terrible injustice of Ranken Townsend's few, but very definite words, and felt like a man who had suddenly come up to an abyss, he took Graham in hand and devoted himself, with all the tenderness of a woman, to this poor boy.