him utterly,
that the only people who really mattered were all in the secret;
they knew that it was Antigone who had let him in for Wrackham; they
wouldn't take him and his Wrackham seriously; and he might be sure
that Ford Lankester would absolve him. It was high comedy after
Lankester's own heart, and so on. But nothing I said could move him.
He stuck to it that the people in the secret, the people I said
mattered, didn't matter in the least, that his duty was to the big
outside public for whom Lives were written, who knew no secrets and
allowed for no motives; and when I urged on him, as a final
consideration, that he'd be all right with _them_, _they_ wouldn't
understand the difference between Charles Wrackham and Ford
Lankester, he cried out that that was what he meant. It was his
business to make them understand. And how could they if he
identified himself with Wrackham? It was almost as if he identified
Lankester----

Then I said that, if that was the way he looked at it, his duty was
clear. He must give Wrackham up.

"Give up Antigone, you mean," he said.

He couldn't.

VII

Of course it was not to be thought of that he should give up his
Lankester, and the first thing to be done was to muzzle Furnival's
young men. I went to Furny the next day and told him plainly that
his joke had gone too far, that he knew what Burton was and that it
wasn't a bit of good trying to force his hand.

And then that evening I went on to Antigone.

She said I was just in time; and when I asked her "for what?" she
said--to give them my advice about her father's "Memoirs."

I told her that was precisely what I'd come for; and she asked if
Grevill had sent me.

I said no, he hadn't. I'd come for myself.

"Because," she said, "he's sent them back."

I stared at her. For one moment I thought that he had done the only
sane thing he could do, that he had made my horrible task
unnecessary.

She explained. "He wants Mamma and me to go over them again and see
if there aren't some things we'd better leave out."

"Oh," I said, "is that all?"

I must have struck her as looking rather queer, for she said, "All?
Why, whatever did you think it was?"

With a desperate courage I dashed into it there where I saw my
opening.

"I thought he'd given it up."

"Given it up?"

Her dismay showed me what I had yet to go through. But I staved it
off a bit. I tried half-measures.

"Well, yes," I said, "you see, he's frightfully dr