exasperation. Everything Derek did seemed designed to cause Nedda pain.
To watch her sitting there, trying resolutely to mask her anxiety,
became intolerable. At last he got up and said to John:

"I think we'd better go round there," and, John nodding, he added: "Wait
here, my child. One of us'll come back at once and tell you anything we
hear."

She gave them a grateful look and the two brothers went out. They had
not gone twenty yards when they met Derek striding along, pale, wild,
unhappy-looking. When Felix touched him on the arm, he started and
stared blankly at his uncle.

"We've seen about Tryst," Felix said: "You've not done anything?"

Derek shook his head.

"Good! John, tell Nedda that, and stay with her a bit. I want to talk to
Derek. We'll go in the other way." He put his hand under the boy's arm
and turned him down into the side street. When they reached the gloomy
little bedroom Felix pointed to the telegram.

"From me. I suppose the news of his death stopped you?"

"Yes." Derek opened the telegram, dropped it, and sat down beside his
valise on the shiny sofa. He looked positively haggard.

Taking his stand against the chest of drawers, Felix said quietly:

"I'm going to have it out with you, Derek. Do you understand what all
this means to Nedda? Do you realize how utterly unhappy you're making
her? I don't suppose you're happy yourself--"

The boy's whole figure writhed.

"Happy! When you've killed some one you don't think much of
happiness--your own or any one's!"

Startled in his turn, Felix said sharply:

"Don't talk like that. It's monomania."

Derek laughed. "Bob Tryst's dead--through me! I can't get out of that."

Gazing at the boy's tortured face, Felix grasped the gruesome fact that
this idea amounted to obsession.

"Derek," he said, "you've dwelt on this till you see it out of all
proportion. If we took to ourselves the remote consequences of all our
words we should none of us survive a week. You're overdone. You'll see
it differently to-morrow."

Derek got up to pace the room.

"I swear I would have saved him. I tried to do it when they committed
him at Transham." He looked wildly at Felix. "Didn't I? You were there;
you heard!"

"Yes, yes; I heard."

"They wouldn't let me then. I thought they mightn't find him guilty
here--so I let it go on. And now he's dead. You don't know how I feel!"

His throat was working, and Felix said with real compassion:

"My dear boy! Yo