e Mersch.

"Been dropping money over him?" he asked, cheerfully. I explained a
little more--that there was a lady.

"Oh, it's _that_," Fox said. "The man _is_ a fool ... But anyhow Mersch
don't count for much in this particular show. He's no money in it even,
so you may put your pride in your pocket, or wherever you keep it. It's
all right. Straight. He's only the small change."

"But," I said, "everyone says; you said yourself...."

"To be sure," he answered. "But you don't think that _I_ play second
fiddle to a bounder of that calibre. Not really?"

He looked at me with a certain seriousness. I remembered, as I had
remembered once before, that Fox was a personality--a power. I had never
realised till then how entirely--fundamentally--different he was from
any other man that I knew. He was surprising enough to have belonged to
another race. He looked at me, not as if he cared whether I gave him his
due or no, but as if he were astonished at my want of perception of the
fact. He let his towzled head fall back upon the plush cushions. "You
might kick him from here to Greenland for me," he said; "I wouldn't
weep. It suits me to hold him up, and a kicking might restore his
equilibrium. I'm sick of him--I've told him so. I knew there _was_ a
woman. But don't you worry; _I'm_ the man here."

"If that's the case ..." I said.

"Oh, that's it," he answered.

I helped him to put the paper to bed; took some of the work off his
hands. It was all part of the getting back to life; of the resuming of
rusty armour; and I wanted to pass the night. I was not unused to it,
as it happened. Fox had had several of these fits during my year, and
during most of them I had helped him through the night; once or twice
for three on end. Once I had had entire control for a matter of five
nights. But they gave me a new idea of Fox, those two or three weird
hours that night. It was as if I had never seen him before. The attacks
grew more virulent as the night advanced. He groaned and raved, and said
things--oh, the most astounding things in gibberish that upset one's
nerves and everything else. At the height he sang hymns, and then, as
the fits passed, relapsed into incredible clear-headedness. It gave me,
I say, a new idea of Fox. It was as if, for all the time I had known
him, he had been playing a part, and that only now, in the delirium of
his pain, in the madness into which he drank himself, were fragments of
the real man thrown to the