The man had dreamed many dreams. What great man does not? Never yet has the human being whose day’s vision is blackened by the curtain of the night reached the shadow of achievement. Then again: was it of England or of John Baltazar that he dreamed? Who can tell? Can any man of noble ambitions, of deep conviction of his own powers, strip himself naked before his God and tell? And now the dreams were but dreams. Blankness confronted him. Raving against fate brought no consolation or relief. In utter dejection he threw himself into an arm-chair and once more gazed hopelessly at catastrophe. There was no longer a John Baltazar. As far as England was concerned he had ceased to exist. In that lawyer’s office he had signed his abdication. There was the letter written and addressed, formally declining the almost hourly expected offer of the ministerial appointment. The offer had now come. He had pledged his honour to give immediate signal for the posting of the answer. That was part of the price demanded for the surrender of the disastrous documents. He went to the telephone and curtly carried out those terms of his contract. There remained the other condition to be fulfilled, for which they had no other guarantee than his word. There at least—and a gleam of pride irradiated his gloom—he had triumphed. He had compelled them to trust his word without a scrap of written obligation. He would sail for China within a month. He sat there alone in the silent house, wondering again whether he had not set the final seal on himself as the Great Ass of the Universe. He had been driven, it is true, into a corner by the malignity and craft of his opponents; but it was he himself who had dictated the terms of surrender. Acting on one of the wild impulses that had deflected from childhood the currents of his life, he had made the amazing proposal. It was the end of John Baltazar. He rose, went over to his table and filled his pipe. Anyhow, the House of Baltazar stood firm in honour. He would yet dandle the grandson on his knee. _La course du flambeau_ was the beginning and end of human endeavour. The torch was in Godfrey’s hands now. . . . Feeling for his match-box, his wrist met the hidden papers in his jacket pocket which he had almost forgotten. He drew them out, folded the one fraught with court-martial and disgrace to Godfrey into a long strip and set fire to it, a torch not to be handed on. He lit his pipe with it instead and watched it burn till the flame touched his finger-tips. Then he went over to the grate and burned the love-letter. He sat down and wrote to Godfrey. “My dear Boy: I think you ought to know that I have been as good as my word. Three hours after parting from you, I recovered possession of the document, and this time you may be certain that it no longer exists, for I have myself destroyed it. Your sheet now is clean in this respect, and also in others, if the barrage of silence is maintained.