little ostentatiously. He now got
up and crossed the room. The back was still towards the group of
talkers. Jewdwine followed its passage. He was fascinated. He gasped.

He could have sworn to that back anywhere, with its square but slender
shoulders, its defiant swing from the straight hips, the head tossed a
little backwards as if to correct the student's tendency to stoop. He
looked from the back to Maddox. Maddox could not see what he saw, but
his face reflected the horror of Jewdwine's.

Their voices were inaudible enough now.

"Do you know who it is?"

"I should think I did. It's the man himself."

"How truly damnable," said Rankin. After those words there was a
silence which Jewdwine, like the wise man he was, utilized for his
correspondence.

It was Maddox who recovered first. "Call him what you like," said he,
in a wonderfully natural voice, between two puffs of a cigarette, "I
consider him an uncommonly good sort. A bit of a bounder, but no end
of a good sort."

The others were evidently impressed by this bold though desperate
policy. Maddox himself was inclined to think that it had saved the
situation, but he was anxious to make sure. Edging his chair by slow
degrees, he turned discreetly round. With the tail of his eye he could
see "the man himself" standing at the far end of the room. He saw too
that his own effort, though supreme, had been unavailing. It had
deceived no one, least of all S.K.R. "The man himself" stood on the
very hearth of the club, with his back to the fireplace. It was the
attitude of mastery, a mastery the more superb because unconscious.
His eyes too, were the eyes of a master, twinkling a little as to
their light, but steady as to their direction, being fixed on Maddox.
He was smiling.

There was nothing malignant, or bitter, or sardonic about that smile.
No devilry of delight at their confusion. No base abandonment of the
whole countenance to mirth, but a curious one-sided smile, implying
delicacies, reservations. A slow smile, reminiscent, ruminant,
appreciative; it expressed (if so subtle and refined a thing could be
said to express anything) a certain exquisite enjoyment of the phrases
in which they had defined him.

And seeing it, Maddox said to himself, "He isn't a gentleman. He's
something more."

In that moment the Celtic soul of Maddox had recognized its master,
and had sworn to him unhesitating allegiance.

CHAPTER VI

It was not until Rankin and th