ween us, and if you want to read
there are three Sunday papers and a crowd of old magazines."

I sat by the fire and read four short stories to pass the time.
Dennison poked his head into the room and withdrew it when he saw me.
I congratulated myself upon that little incident, for I felt that if he
understood how I hated the sight of him something would have been
gained. At nine o'clock I left Collier and went to my rooms to wait
for Ward. I did not expect him to be punctual, because I guessed that
a dinner given by Bunny Langham would be difficult to leave. He turned
up, however, in about half-an-hour, and said he was jolly glad to get
away from the Sceptre. "Bunny's all right," he said, "but some of his
friends are too much--even for me."

I replied that Bunny was all wrong, and said why I thought so.

"You don't know him," Ward explained; "he would never leave any one in
a hole if he thought for a second. He's the most good-natured, weak
kind of man on earth, but he would never do the wrong thing. He goes
straight over a precious difficult country, for he hasn't got any more
will than a rabbit and is as blind as a bat. He will be in trouble to
the end of his days, but he will never make any one ashamed of him."

I thought this was rather a glorified conception of the Bunny I knew,
so I said nothing.

"You must see that he is a good sort," Ward said.

"Everybody's a good sort," I answered impatiently. "Collier calls the
fellow with the green-baize apron who collects the boots a good sort,
and some man I met at home, who talked about emperors and kings as if
they were all his cousins, declared that the Sultan of Morocco was the
best sort he had ever met--when one got to know him."

"I don't wonder you are sick," he returned. "I should be if any one
had done to me what we did to you and Foster this afternoon. It looks
pretty rotten on the face of it, and I am as sorry as blazes that you
had to have a row with those men."

"I'm not sick about the row," I answered; "that would have been fun if
they hadn't got Foster's name."

Ward lay back in his chair, and tried to blow rings of smoke from his
cigarette.

"Then you are just angry because you think we ought to have come back,"
he said.

"No, I'm not," I replied, and I felt horribly uncomfortable.

He looked most thoroughly puzzled. "What on earth do you mean?" he
asked.

I got up and walked about the room before I spoke. "It's this way," I
be