hen
we've turned round--I _shall_ do."

"When 'we' have turned round?"

"Well"--he was a trifle disconcerted at the tone--"I say that because
you'll have helped me."

"Oh, I do nothing but want to help you!" Winch replied--which made it
right again; especially as our friend still felt himself reassuringly
and sustainingly grasped. But Winch went on: "You _would_ go to him--in
kindness?"

"Well--to understand."

"To understand how he could swindle you?"

"Well," Mark kept on, "to try and make out with him how, after such
things--!" But he stopped; he couldn't name them.

It was as if his companion knew. "Such things as you've done for him of
course--such services as you've rendered him."

"Ah, from far back. If I could tell you," our friend vainly wailed--"if
I could tell you!"

Newton Winch patted his shoulder. "Tell me--tell me!"

"The sort of relation, I mean; ever so many things of a kind--!" Again,
however, he pulled up; he felt the tremor of his voice.

"Tell me, tell me," Winch repeated with the same movement.

The tone in it now made their eyes meet again, and with this
presentation of the altered face Mark measured as not before, for
some reason, the extent of the recent ravage. "You must have been ill
indeed."

"Pretty bad. But I'm better. And you do me good"--with which the light
of convalescence came back.

"I don't awfully bore you?"

Winch shook his head. "You keep me up--and you see how no one else comes
near me."

Mark's eyes made out that he was better--though it wasn't yet that
nothing was the matter with him. If there was ever a man with whom there
was still something the matter--! Yet one couldn't insist on that, and
meanwhile he clearly did want company. "Then there we are. I myself had
no one to go to."

"You save my life," Newton renewedly grinned.

VII

"Well, it's your own fault," Mark replied to that, "if you make me
take advantage of you." Winch had withdrawn his hand, which was back,
violently shaking keys or money, in his trousers pocket; and in this
position he had abruptly a pause, a sensible, absence, that might have
represented either some odd drop of attention, some turn-off to another
thought, or just simply the sudden act of listening. His guest had
indeed himself--under suggestion--the impression of a sound. "Mayn't you
perhaps--if you hear something--have a call?"

Mark had said it so lightly, however, that he was the more struck with
his host's app