When Dick Cameron reached the outer door his cap was on the back of his head, his hands were thrust deep into his coat pockets. "Good-evening," he said. "Excuse my long intrusion. I shall be immensely obliged if you will let me have a wire reporting your safe arrival, and a letter, later on, with details as to Ronnie's state. I put my address on the paper I gave you just now, with the name of the man Mrs. West must call in." Dick crossed the great entrance-hall, and ran lightly down the stone steps. Aubrey heard the street door close behind him. Then he shut and double locked his own flat. "Upstart!" he said. "Jackanapes! Insolent fool!" It is sometimes consoling to call people that which you know they are not, yet heartily wish they were. Aubrey entered his sitting-room. He wanted an immediate vent for his ill-humour and sense of impotent mortification. The leaf from Dick's note-book lay on the table. Aubrey took it up, opened the iron door of the stove, and thrust the leaf into the very heart of the fire. CHAPTER VIII PARADISE LOST Aubrey Treherne sat at his writing-table, his head buried in his hands. Before him lay the closely-written sheets of his letter to Helen; beside them her pencil note which had fallen, unnoticed by Ronnie, from her letter to him. Presently Aubrey lifted his head. His face bore traces of the anguish of soul through which he had been passing. A man who has yielded himself to unrestrained wrong-doing, suffers with a sharpness of cold misery unknown to the brave true heart, however hard or lonely may be his honourable way. Before finally reading his own letter to Helen, Aubrey read again her pathetic note to her husband. "Ronnie, my own! "Excuse pencil and bad writing. Nurse has propped me up in bed, but not so high as I should like. "Darling, I am not ill, only rather weak, and very, very happy. "Ronnie, I must write to you on this first day of being allowed a pencil, though I shall not, of course, yet send the letter. In fact, I daresay I shall keep it, and give it to you by-and-by. But you will like to feel that I wrote at once. "Darling, how shall I tell you? Beside me, in your empty place, as I write, lies your little son--our own baby-boy, Ronnie! "He came three days ago. "Oh, Ronnie, it is so wonderful! He is _so_ like you; though his tiny fingers are all pink and crinkled, and his palms are like little sea-shells. But he is going to have your artistic hands. When I cuddle them against my neck, the awful longing and loneliness of these past months seem wiped out. But only because he is yours, darling, and because I know you are soon coming back to him and to me.