It was only when he found himself alone in his room and reflected on the “reasons” for his journey to Marseilles that the crazy part of his brain summed up his amatory situation. He laughed sedately. He held the woman’s heart in his hands. At any hour he could dash it on the pavement of Paris, whereon so many hearts of women had been broken. At any hour could he work this great wickedness. But not to-night. To-night he would take the heart in a firmer grip. He would dally with the delicious malignity. Besides, his fastidiousness forbade an orgy of pleasure. One wickedness at a time. Was he not bound even now for Marseilles, on a merciless errand? This deed of darkness must be accomplished swiftly. The other could wait. As a crown to his contentment came the realisation that these, his supreme projects of devildom, lay hidden in his own heart, secret from Huckaby and his fellow minions. They were futile knaves, all of them. Well, perhaps not Huckaby. Huckaby had more than once expressed the desire to reform. . . . By the way, what should be done with Huckaby during his absence in Marseilles? He was useless in Paris. Why not send him back to London? He summoned Huckaby to his room, and, whilst packing, laid the question before him. “For God’s sake don’t,” said Huckaby, almost in terror. “Why shouldn’t I?” “I can’t go back,” said he, tugging at his beard, no longer straggly, but neatly cut to a point. “I can’t go back to it all—to the squalor and drunkenness—it’s no use mincing words with you—I can’t do it. You’ve set me on the clean road, and you’ve got to see that I keep there. You’ve given me chances in the past and I abused them. You have the power to give me another—and I won’t abuse it. I swear I won’t. To kick me back again would be hellish wickedness.” “You’re quite right,” replied Quixtus gravely, balancing in his hand an ill-folded pair of trousers which he was about to put into his suit-case. “I appreciate your position perfectly. But, as I have implied to you before, in a similar conversation, hellish wickedness is what I—what I, in fact, am devoting my life to accomplish.”