"What have I said? Well, I reminded him of a trifling incident which there was no need to remind him of at all, for the mere thought of it turned him pale the moment he saw me. So I took the liberty of showing him what might still happen if he didn't do exactly what I wanted about you. My boy, the thing was settled in two minutes. A rising young fellow like Wintour Phipps is not the man to be struck off the rolls if he knows it! But I wasn't coming away without having the whole thing down in black and white, and here it is." From his inner pocket he took out a long blue envelope and slapped it down on the desk. "May I see?" said Harry in a throbbing voice. "Certainly; it's your business now, not mine." Harry ran his eye over the brief document. Then he looked up. "It's my business now--not yours?" "To be sure." "Then I'm very much obliged to you, Mr. Lowndes, but here's an end of it." He tore the paper twice across, and carefully dropped it into the waste-paper basket. Then he looked up again. And he had never seen Lowndes really pale until that moment, nor really red until the next. Yet the storm passed over after all. "Well--upon--my--soul!" said Gordon Lowndes, very slowly, but with more humour and less wrath in each successive word. "And you're the man who wanted a billet!" "I want one still, but not on such terms. I'd rather starve." "There's no accounting for taste." "But I'm very sorry, I am indeed, that you should have troubled yourself to no purpose," continued Harry, holding out his hand with genuine emotion. "It was awfully good of you, and I shall never forget it." "Nonsense--nonsense!" said Lowndes sharply. "Don't name it, my good fellow. We all look at these things differently--don't we, Bacchus? You wouldn't have had any scruples, would you? No more would I, my boy, I tell you frankly. But don't name it again. It was no trouble at all, and, even if it had been, there's nothing I wouldn't do for any of you, Ringrose, and now you know it. Hurt my feelings? Not a bit of it, my dear boy, I'm only frightened I hurt yours. Good night, good night, and my love to the old lady. Cut away home and tell her I've no more principles than Bacchus has brains!" But Harry thought the matter over in the Underground; and it was many a day before he mentioned it at the flat. CHAPTER XII. THE CHAMPION OF THE GODS.