Louis was amused, but profoundly uncomfortable. This particular detail of Tyson's biography was not one of the things he knew; if it had been, he would naturally have avoided the most distant allusion to it. As it happened, in his ignorance he seemed to have been perpetually blundering up against the circumstance. He went on clumsily enough--"If it was, I didn't know it, and if I had known it, it wouldn't have interested me in the least. _You_ interest me; you are, and always will be, unique." "You're an awful fool, Stanistreet. By your own admission Morley is acquainted with this _charming romance_." "What if he is?" "The inference is obvious. You told him." "Good God! If I did, do you suppose that Morley or any one else would care? Does anybody care what another fellow's father was? As a matter of fact I neither knew nor cared. But for your own genius for autobiography I should never have heard of it." "That's odd, considering that you've made capital out of it ever since I knew you. It supplied the point of all your witticisms that weren't failures. I assure you your delicate humor was not lost on me." "Considering that I've known you for at least twenty years, those jokes must have worn a little--er--threadbare. I'm extremely sorry for these--these breaches of etiquette. I shall do my best to repair them. That's a specimen of the thing you mean, I imagine?" From sheer nervousness Louis did what was generally the best thing to do after any little squabble with Tyson. He laughed. Unfortunately this time Tyson was in no mood for laughter. The plebeian was uppermost in him. His wrongs rankled in him like a hereditary taint; this absurd quarrel with Stanistreet was a skirmish in the blood-feud of class against class. Tyson was morbidly sensitive on the subject of his birth, but latterly he had almost forgotten it. It had become an insignificant episode in the long roll of his epic past. Now for the first time for years it was recalled to him with a rude shock. How real it was too! As he thought of it he was back in the stifling little shop. Faugh! How it reeked of shoddy! Back in the whitewashed chapel, hot with the fumes of gas and fervent humanity. He heard the hymn sung to a rollicking tune:-- "I am so glad that my Father in heaven Tells of His love in the book He has given. "I am so glad that Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me, I am so glad that Jesus loves me," etc.