d-night again and waited till the sound of his footsteps had
altogether died away. He went back to the house and found Thresk still
at work in the library.

"I don't want to interrupt you," he said, "but I must thank you again. I
can't tell you what I owe you. She's pretty wonderful, isn't she? I feel
coarse beside her, I tell you. I couldn't talk like this to any one else,
but you're so sympathetic."

Henry Thresk had responded with nothing more than a grunt. He sat
slashing at his brief with a blue pencil, all the while that Dick
Hazlewood was speaking, and wishing that he would go to bed. Dick however
was unabashed.

"Did you ever see a woman look so well in a blue frock? Or in a black one
either? There's a sort of painted thing she wears sometimes too. Well,
perhaps I had better go to bed."

"I think it would be wise," said Thresk.

Young Hazlewood went over to the table in the corner and lit his candle.

"You'll shut that window before you go to bed, won't you?"

"Yes."

Hazlewood filled for himself a glass of barley-water and drank it,
contemplating Henry Thresk over the rim. Then he went back to him,
carrying his candle in his hand.

"Why don't you get married, Mr. Thresk?" he asked. "You ought to, you
know. Men run to seed so if they don't."

"Thank you," said Thresk.

The tone was not cordial, but mere words were an invitation to Dick
Hazlewood at this moment. He sat down and placed his lighted candle on
the table between Thresk and himself.

"I am thirty-four years old," he said, and Thresk interposed without
glancing up from his foolscap:

"From your style of conversation I find that very difficult to believe,
Captain Hazlewood."

"I have wasted thirty-four complete years of twelve months each,"
continued the ecstatic Captain, who appeared to think that on the very
day of his birth he would have recognised his soul's mate. "Just jogging
along with the world, a miracle about one and not half an eye to perceive
it. You know."

"No, I don't," Thresk observed. He lifted the candle and held it out to
Dick. Dick got up and took it.

"Thank you," he said. "That was very kind of you. I told you--didn't
I?--how sympathetic I thought you."

Thresk was not proof against his companion's pertinacity. He broke into a
laugh. "Are you going to bed?" he pleaded, and Dick Hazlewood replied,
"Yes I am." Suddenly his tone changed.

"Stella had a very good friend in you, Mr. Thresk. I am sure she still
ha