e asked. "You look as though you'd seen a
ghost."

Douglas pulled himself together with an effort.

"I'm not quite the thing," he said. "Late, last night, I suppose. I'm
sure it's very good of you to think of me, Speedwell, but I'd rather you
left me out."

"Why?"

"You see I'm really only a novice--quite a beginner, and I don't feel
I've the right to be included."

"That" Speedwell answered, "is our business. You didn't come to us--I
came to you. All you have to do is to answer a few questions, and let
me have that photo."

Douglas shook his head.

"You must please excuse me, Speedwell," he said. "It's very kind of
you, but to tell you the truth, there are certain painful incidents in
connection with my life before I came to London which I am anxious to
forget. I do not choose to have a past at all."

Speedwell shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette. He was none too
well pleased.

"You can't expect," he remarked, "to become famous and remain at the
same time unknown. There is a great and growing weakness on the part of
the public to-day for personalities. I suppose it is the spread of
American methods in journalism which is responsible for it. Some day
your chroniclers will help themselves to your past, whether you will or
not."

Douglas rose up with an uneasy laugh.

"It will be an evil day for them," he said; "perhaps for me. But at
least I will not anticipate it."

He wandered restlessly from room to room of the club, returning the
greetings of his acquaintances with a certain vagueness, lingering
nowhere for more than a moment or two. Finally, he took his hat from
the rack and walked out into the street. Fronting him was the Thames.
He leaned against the iron railing and looked out across the dusty,
sun-baked gardens to where the river flowed down between the bridges.
Something of the despair, which had so nearly broken his heart a short
while since, seemed again to lay tormenting clutches upon him. After
all, was not a man for ever the slave of his past? No present success,
no future triumphs could ever wholly free him from the memory of that
one merciless hour. As a rule his thoughts recoiled shuddering from
even the slightest lingering about it. To-night there swept in upon him
with irresistible force a crowd of vivid memories. He saw the quaint
old village, its grey stone houses dotted about the hillside, the
farmhouse which had been his home--bare, gaunt, everything outside and
in typical