vell answered, "but I
shall never be the man I was. I have seen--God grant that I may some
day forget what I have seen! No wonder that my nerves have gone! I saw
a Russian correspondent, a strong brutal-looking man, go off into
hysterics; I saw another run amuck through the camp, shooting right
and left, and, finally, blow his own brains out. Many a night I sobbed
myself to sleep. The men who live through tragedies, Aynesworth, age
fast. I expect that I shall find Wingrave changed."

"I would give a good deal," Aynesworth declared, "to have known him when
you did."

Lovell nodded.

"You should be able to judge of the past," he said, "by the present.
Four years of--intimate companionship with any man should be enough!"

"Perhaps!" Aynesworth declared. "And yet I can assure you that I know
no more of Wingrave today than when I was first attracted to him by your
story and became his secretary. It is a humiliating confession, but it
is the truth."

"That is why you remain with him," Lovell remarked.

"I suppose so! I have often meant to leave, but somehow, when the time
comes, I stay on. His life seems to be made up of brutalities, small and
large. He ruins a man with as little compunction as one could fancy him,
in his younger days, pulling the legs from a fly. I have never seen him
do a kindly action. And yet, all the time I find myself watching for
it. A situation arises, and I say to myself: 'Now I am going to see
something different.' I never do, and yet I always expect it. Am I
boring you, Lovell?"

"Not in the least! Go on! Anything concerning Wingrave interests me."

"It is four years ago, you know, since I went to him. My first glimpse
of his character was the cold brutality with which he treated Lady Ruth
when she went to see him. Then we went down to his country place in
Cornwall. There was a small child there, whose father had been the
organist of the village, and who had died penniless. There was no one to
look after her, no one to save her from the charity schools and domestic
service afterwards. The church was on Wingrave's estate, it should
have been his duty to augment the ridiculous salary the dead man had
received. Would you believe it, Wingrave refused to do a single thing
for that child! He went down there like a vandal to sell the heirlooms
and pictures which had belonged to his family for generations. He had no
time, he told me coldly, for sentiment."

"It sounds brutal enough," Lovell admi