close to home,"--Hartley spoke with a jerk. "A hateful
job--I thought I'd tell you--" He spoke in broken sentences, and his
words affected the Banker very perceptibly.

"Can't you drop it?"

Joicey came to a standstill, and his voice was lowered almost to a
whisper.

"I wish to Heaven I could, but it's a question of duty,"--he could
hardly see Joicey's face in the gathering gloom. "I suppose you guess
what I'm driving at, Joicey, though how you guess, I don't know."

"I think I'll say good night here, Hartley,"--the Banker's voice was
unnatural and wavering. "I can't discuss it with you. It's got to be
proved," he spoke more heatedly. "What have you got? Only the word of a
stinking native. I tell you it's monstrous." He stopped and clutched
Hartley's arm, and seemed as though he was staggering.

"What has come over you, Joicey; are you ill?"

"I'll sit down here for a moment,"--Joicey walked towards a low wall.
"Sometimes I get these attacks. I'm better after they are over. Better,
much better. Leave me here to go back by myself, Hartley. You need have
no fear, I'm over it now; I'll rest for a little and then go my way
quickly. Believe me, I'd rather be alone."

Very reluctantly, Hartley quitted him. He felt that Joicey was ill, and
might even be beginning the horrible phase of "breaking up," which comes
on with such fatal speed in a tropical climate. He went back after he
had gone a mile along the road, but Joicey was no longer there. It was
too late to think of going to the Club, for the road that Joicey and
Hartley had followed led away from the residential quarter of Mangadone,
and he disliked the idea of going back to his own bungalow and waiting
through the dismal hour that lies across the evening between the time to
come in and the time to dress for dinner.

Had there been a friendly house near, Hartley would have gone in on the
chance of finding someone at home, but as there was not, he made the
best of existing circumstances and took his way along the road towards
his own bungalow. He could not deny that his walk with Joicey had only
served to depress his spirits, and he was sorry to think that his friend
was so obviously in bad health. The world seemed an uncomfortable place,
full of gloomy surprises, and Hartley wished that he had a wife to go
back to. Not a superb being like Mrs. Wilder, who was encircled by the
halo of High Romance, but just an ordinary wife, with a friendly smile
and a way of talk