"This is immensely surprising, Hallam," he said. "I have not yet recovered from the amazement which the receipt of your cablegram caused me. You see, I--we all concluded you were dead. The mistake was perfectly natural." "I grant that," Hallam answered, considerably mystified and a little annoyed by the other's manner. "At the same time I don't see why it should be regarded in the light of a misfortune that I am not dead." "My dear fellow! Certainly not. But you must allow for a certain-- astonishment. I might even put it more strongly. Your return after so long a period calls for such an abrupt readjustment. There have been changes. I don't see how you can expect otherwise. I've sat in this chair day after day since receiving your cable trying to resolve some way out of the muddle. I haven't communicated with--with your wife. You didn't instruct us, so I've done nothing." "Quite right," Hallam said. "I prefer to see her myself." "You haven't written?" "No. I am going home when I leave here." "But Mrs Hallam has left Cape Town. She gave up the house and went round to Port Elizabeth and took a house there. Since then she--she has given up that house also, I believe. In fact I know she has. We manage her affairs for her." Hallam nodded. "I see nothing very extraordinary in these changes," he said. "It was not to be expected that she should remain in Cape Town alone. She has relations at the Bay." Mr Huntley was silent. He took up from the desk before him, and put down again, a little sheaf of papers, and fidgeted with a pen lying beside the blotting-pad. He looked as he felt, immensely embarrassed. "My dear Hallam," he burst forth at length, "I don't wish to appear to criticise your actions, but your absence--your complete disappearance, in fact, seems to me inexplicable. That is how it would strike any unbiassed person. Whatever your private reasons were for leaving your home, you might at least have kept us informed as to your whereabouts. It would have prevented a great deal of subsequent distress." Hallam looked at the speaker in surprise. The last thing he had anticipated was this tone of rebuke from his old friend. That Huntley should suppose he had deliberately suppressed all information relating to himself struck him as an unjust view to take; he resented it. "I have been a prisoner in Germany since the beginning of the war," he said quietly. "I wrote home many letters in the early days of my captivity. I wrote to you. Oh! there's no need to tell me you never received it. I got no replies to anything I sent out; so I left off writing after a time. My case was not exceptional." Huntley leaned with his arm along the desk and looked earnestly into Hallam's eyes: his own eyes expressed an immense sympathy. "Good God, Hallam!" he said. Suddenly he grasped Hallam's hand and wrung it hard.