I pondered more gravely still. "Wait a bit. It all happened that Sunday night, kink and all?" "Yes." "That was the night you left my place with Julia Oliphant, said good-bye to her at Waterloo, and went on to Trenchard's? Did you stick to that programme?" "Yes." ("And so," something seemed positively to shout within me, "much good you've done yourself, Julia Oliphant! Much good you're still plotting! That gap that he's skipped altogether--that's precisely where you're setting the man-traps for him, you and your chiffons and your brown charmeuse and your new willow-leaf shoes! You'd better forget Peggy and her garters and get back into your nice quiet tea-gowns again!") But aloud I resumed: "Then, if nothing's happened since that night, that means that you're now stable--stationary?" His reply gave me a queer shock. It was in the last word that the shock lay. "As far as I can make out, sir." "So you haven't got to move on from pillar to post and one lodging to another?" "I've been at St Briac for ten days. And that isn't all," he continued earnestly. "I can't say for certain, and perhaps it's too soon to talk about it. So this is touching wood. But I've got a sort of feeling that if I'm careful and live perfectly quietly--no excitement and going to bed early, you know--I might be able to stick just like this for a long time. I know no more about that gap than you do, but it seems to have cleared the air like a thunderstorm. And when I tell you that I really intended to put myself out ... oh, how thankful...." But again he checked himself. And I too found myself gulping to think that I had so recently wanted to wash my hands of him. Be rid of him? I knew now that not only should I never be rid of him, but that never again should I want to. Charming, innocent, beautiful and grave! I cannot tell you, for I do not know, what mysterious spiritual thing Julia Oliphant had actually wrought upon him. I only knew that all that he had so greatly dreaded she had taken upon herself, and that whatever her portion thenceforward was, his was complete absolution. "One for the Lord, the other for Azazel"; out into the wilderness she, the scapegoat, must go; but on him the smell of that fiercest fire of all had not so much as passed.... And I realised in that moment that thenceforward he was my charge--yes, my son had I had one. Must he stay in France? Then I must stay with him. Must he wander? Then I must wander too. For the rest of his unstable life I must be his staff and support. "But I say, sir," he said shyly presently, "about why I dug you out to-night. I hope you'll say no straight away if you think it's fearful cheek, but the fact is I must have some more colours, and--well, I've got a little money in London, but I can't get at it just for the moment. So I really came to ask you if you could lend me five hundred francs." This was strange. I shot a swift glance at him as he lay, a rich dark patch of blouse and corduroys at my side.