oesn't matter much what Jewdwine says. These fellows come
up from Oxford with wet towels round their heads to keep the
metaphysics in. Jewdwine's muddled himself with the Absolute Beauty
till he doesn't know a beautiful thing if you stick it under his
nose."

"Possibly not; if you keep it farther off he might have a better
chance. Trust him to know."

"Well, if he knows, he doesn't care."

"Oh, doesn't he. That's where Jewdwine's great. He cares for nothing
else. He cares more than any man alive--in his heart."

"D--n his heart! I don't believe he has one."

"Would you oblige me by not talking about him any more?"

Maddox obliged him.

They tramped far into the country, returning at nightfall by the great
road that crosses the high ground of the Heath. Rickman loved that
road; for by night, or on a misty evening, it was possible to imagine
some remote resemblance between it and the long straight ridge of
Harcombe Hill.

They paused by common consent where the Heath drops suddenly from the
edge of the road; opening out the view towards London. The hollow
beneath them, filled by a thin fog, had become mysterious and immense.

"By the way," said Maddox, following an apparently irrelevant train of
thought, "what has become of your friendship for Miss Poppy Grace?"

"It has gone," said Rickman, "where the old trousers go. Look there--"

Above them heaven seemed to hang low, bringing its stars nearer. A few
clouds drifted across it, drenched in the blue of the night behind
them, a grey-blue, watery and opaque. Below, sunk in a night greyer
and deeper, were the lights of London. The ridge they stood on was
like the rampart of another world hung between the stars which are the
lights of poets, and the lights which are the stars of men. Under the
stars Maddox chanted softly the last verses of the _Song of
Confession_ that Rickman had made.

"Oh, Ricky-ticky," he said, "you know everything. How did you know
it?"

"Because I've been there."

"But--you didn't stay?"

"No--no. I didn't stay. I couldn't."

"I'm still there. And for the life of me I see no way out. It's like
going round in the underground railway--a vicious circle. Since you're
given to confession--own up. Don't you ever want to get back there?"

"Not yet. My way won't take me back if I only stick to it."

Under the stars he endeavoured to account for his extraordinary
choosing of the way.

"I've three reasons for keeping straight. To begin wi