d which he had never cared to enter. It was a foolish
world, that world of book reading, a lackadaisical region of unreality,
a place for women and children, but never meant for a man with a man's
work to do.

His stolidly contemptuous eyes were still peering about the room when
the door opened and closed again. There was something so
characteristically guarded and secretive in the movement that Blake
knew it was Copeland even before he let his gaze wheel around to the
newcomer. About the entire figure, in fact, he could detect that
familiar veiled wariness, that enigmatic and self-concealing
cautiousness which had always had the power to touch him into a quick
irritation.

"Mr. Blake, I believe," said Copeland, very quietly. He was in full
evening dress. In one hand he held a silk hat and over one arm hung a
black top-coat. He held himself in perfect control, in too perfect
control, yet his thin face was almost ashen in color, almost the
neutral-tinted gray of a battle-ship's side-plates. And when he spoke
it was with the impersonal polite unction with which he might have
addressed an utter stranger.

"You wished to see me!" he said, as his gaze fastened itself on Blake's
figure. The fact that he remained standing imparted a tentativeness to
the situation. Yet his eyes remained on Blake, studying him with the
cold and mildly abstracted curiosity with which he might view a mummy
in its case.

"I do!" said Blake, without rising from his chair.

"About what?" asked Copeland. There was an acidulated crispness in his
voice which hinted that time might be a matter of importance to him.

"You know what it's about, all right," was Blake's heavy retort.

"On the contrary," said Copeland, putting down his hat and coat, "I 'm
quite in the dark as to how I can be of service to you."

Both his tone and his words angered Blake, angered him unreasonably.
But he kept warning himself to wait, to hold himself in until the
proper moment arrived.

"I expect no service from you," was Blake's curtly guttural response.
He croaked out his mirthless ghost of a laugh. "You 've taught me
better than that!"

Copeland, for all his iciness, seemed to resent the thrust.

"We have always something to learn," retorted, meeting Blake's stolid
stare enmity.

"I guess I've learned enough!" said Blake.

"Then I hope it has brought you what you are looking for!" Copeland,
as he spoke, stepped over to a chair, but he still remai