ct could Julian be acquainted?...
Had Julian been dishonest? Louis would have liked to think Julian
dishonest, but he could not. Then what ...?

He heard movements above. And the front gate creaked. As if a spring
had been loosed, he jumped from the chair and ran upstairs--away from
the arriving Julian and towards his wife. Rachel was just getting up.

"Don't trouble," he said. "I'll see him. I'll deal with him. Much
better for you to stay in bed."

He perceived that he did not want Rachel to hear what Julian had to
say until after he had heard it himself.

Rachel hesitated.

"Do you think so?... What have you been doing? I thought you were
coming up again at once."

"I had one or two little things--"

A terrific knock resounded on the front door.

"There he is!" Louis muttered, as it were aghast.

CHAPTER XI

JULIAN'S DOCUMENT

I

Julian Maldon faced Louis in the parlour. Louis had conducted him
there without the assistance of Mrs. Tams, who had been not merely
advised, but commanded, to go to bed. Julian had entered the house
like an exasperated enemy--glum, suspicious, and ferocious. His mien
seemed to say: "You wanted me to come, and I've come. But mind you
don't drive me to extremities." Impossible to guess from his grim
face that he had asked permission to come! Nevertheless he had shaken
Louis' hand with a ferocious sincerity which Louis felt keenly the
next morning. He was the same Julian except that he had grown a brown
beard. He had exactly the same short, thick-set figure, and the same
defiant stare. South Africa had not changed him. No experience could
change him. He would have returned from ten years at the North Pole
or at the Equator, with savages or with uncompromising intellectuals,
just the same Julian. He was one of those beings who are violently
themselves all the time. By some characteristic social clumsiness
he had omitted to remove his overcoat in the lobby. And now, in
the parlour, he could not get it off. As a man seated, engaged in
conversation by a woman standing, forgets to rise at once and then
cannot rise, finding himself glued to the chair, so was Julian with
his overcoat; to take it off he would have had to flay himself alive.

"Won't you take off your overcoat?" Louis suggested.

"No."

With his instinctive politeness Louis turned to improve the fire.
And as he poked among the coals he said, in the way of amiable
conversation--

"How's South Africa?"

"Al