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“It doesn’t take much to make me happy,” Averil said, leaning her forehead against his shoulder. “I hope you will be a kind master, Dick, and let me have my own way sometimes.”

“Master?” scoffed Derrick, kissing her hair. “You know you can lead me by the nose from world’s end to world’s end.”

“I wonder,” said Averil, with a little sigh. “Do you know, Dick, I’m not quite sure of that.”

“What!” said Derrick softly. “Not–quite–sure!”

“Not when you look as you did thirty seconds ago,” Averil explained. “Never mind, dear old boy! I’m glad you can look like that, though, mind, you must never, never do it again if you live to be a hundred.”

She looked up at him suddenly and clasped her hands behind his neck. “You do love me, don’t you, Dick?” she said.

“My darling, I worship you!” Derrick answered very solemnly.

And Averil drew his head down with a quivering smile and kissed him on the lips.

IV

CARLYON DEFENDS HIMSELF

“Ah, Derrick! I thought I could not be mistaken.”

Derrick turned swiftly at the touch of a hand on his shoulder, and nearly tumbled into the roadway. He had been sauntering somewhat aimlessly down the Strand till pulled up in this rather summary fashion. He now found himself staring at a tall man who had come up behind him–a man with a lined face and drooping eyelids, and a settled weariness about his whole demeanour which, somehow, conveyed the impression that, in his opinion, at least, there was nothing on earth worth striving for.

Derrick recovered his balance and stood still before him. Speech, however, quite unexpectedly failed him. The quiet greeting had scattered his ideas momentarily.

The hand that had touched his shoulder was deliberately transferred to his elbow.

“Come!” said his acquaintance, smiling a little. “We are blocking the gangway. I am staying at the Grand. If you are at liberty you might dine with me. By the way, how are you, old fellow?”

He spoke very quietly and wholly without affectation. There was a touch of tenderness in his last sentence that quite restored Derrick’s faculties.

He shook his arm free from the other’s hand with a vehemence of action that was unmistakably hostile.

“No, thanks, Colonel Carlyon!” he said, speaking fast and feverishly. “If I were starving, I wouldn’t accept hospitality from you!”

“Don’t be a fool!” said Carlyon.

His tone was still quiet, but it was also stern. He pushed a determined hand through Derrick’s arm. “If you won’t come my way,” he said, “I shall come yours.”

Derrick swore under his breath. But he yielded. “Very well,” he said aloud. “I’ll come. But I swear I won’t touch anything.”

“You needn’t swear,” said Carlyon; “it’s unnecessary.”

And Derrick bit his lip nearly through, being exasperated. He did not, however, resist the compelling hand a second time, realizing the futility of such a proceeding.

So in dead silence they reached the Grand and entered. Then Carlyon spoke again.

“Come up to my room first!” he said.

Derrick went with him unprotesting.

In his own room Carlyon turned round and took him by the shoulders. “Now,” he said, “are you ill or merely sulky? Just tell me which, and I shall know how to treat you!”

“It’s no thanks to you I’m not dead!” exclaimed Derrick stormily. “I didn’t want to meet you, but, by Heaven, since I have, and since you have forced an interview upon me, I’ll go ahead and tell you what I think of you.”

Carlyon turned away from him and sat down. “Do, by all means,” he said, “if it will get you into a healthier frame of mind!”

But Derrick’s flow of eloquence unexpectedly failed him at this juncture, and he stood awkwardly silent.

Carlyon turned round at last and looked at him. “Sit down, Dick,” he said patiently, “and stop being an ass! I’m a difficult man to quarrel with, as you know. So sit down and state your grievance, and have done with it!”

“You know very well what’s wrong!” Derrick burst out fiercely, beginning to prowl to and fro.