Quin was not there, and a moment later Dick was called away to speak to some one at the telephone. Alymer looked up at Hal suddenly, with a very direct gaze. “Lorraine told me Sir Edwin gave you the watch the other day. I don’t know how you can keep it, much less wear it. You ought to throw it into the Thames.” Hal flushed up angrily. “Of course I’m interested in your opinion on the matter,” she said, “but I had not thought of asking for it.” Hermon flushed too, but he stood his ground. “It would be the opinion of most men.” “‘Most men’ don’t appeal to me in the least. I am quite satisfied with my own opinion in this matter.” “Still, I wish you wouldn’t wear it,” he urged, a little boyishly. “The man has shown himself a cad. He was in a tight corner, and he let a woman buy him out.” “And don’t most men take help from a woman at some time or other?” He winced, but answered sturdily: “Not monetary help. Besides, he didn’t worry much about getting you talked of, did he?” Hal was just going to make a sarcastic retort, when Dick reappeared, and the matter was dropped. But when she came to think of it afterwards, she could not but be a little struck at Alymer’s attitude, and wondered why he had taken so much interest in her action. A few days later Basil Hayward died. Hal was not there at the time, but Dudley had not come home at all the previous night, and she was afraid that his friend was worse. In the afternoon she had been detained at the office, and she hardly liked to go up to Holloway in the evening without knowing if she was wanted. So she sat anxiously waiting for Dudley. When at last he arrived he looked haggard and worn and ill. Hal stood up when he came in, and waited for him to speak. “It’s all over,” he said, and sank into his chair as if he were dead-beat. Hal’s hart ached with sympathy. She felt instinctively there was more here than grief for a friend whose death could only be regarded as a merciful release. She was right. For the last three weeks Dudley and Ethel had been in almost daily contact beside the dying man’s bed. Silently, devotedly they had served him together. But while Ethel was occupied only with the sufferer, Dudley, in the long night-watches, had seen at last what manner of woman it was he had passed by for the pretty, shallow, selfish little sister. Ever since the elopement, three months ago, he had been changing. It had been the bitter blow that had stabbed him awake. In some mysterious way new aspects, new ideas, new understanding, began to develop, where before had been chiefly a narrow outlook and rigid conformity. It was though in the fulfilling of her work, Life had harrowed his soul with a bitter harrowing, that it might bring forth the better fruit in its season. The harrowing had seared and scarred, but already the new richness was showing, the new promise of a nobler future.