himself.  His visit to Sir Anthony was actuated by sheer malignity.  Without doubt, he counted on his story being believed.  But he knew enough of the hated and envied aristocracy to feel assured that Sir Anthony would not subject his beloved dead to such ghastly disinterment as a public denunciation of Boyce would necessitate.  He desired to throw an asphyxiating bomb into the midst of our private circle.  He reckoned on the Mayor taking some action that would stop the reception and thereby put a public affront on Boyce.  Sir Anthony’s violent indignation and perhaps my appearance of cold incredulity upset his calculations.  He went out of the room a defeated man, with the secret load (as I knew now) of blackmail on his shoulders.

I snapped my fingers at Gedge.  Randall seemed to do the same, undesirable father-in-law in prospectu as he was.  But that was entirely Randall’s affair.  The stomach that he had for fighting with Germans would stand him in good stead against Gedge, especially as he had formed so contemptuous an estimate of the latter’s valour.

I emerged again into my little world.  I saw most of my friends.  Phyllis lay in wait for me at the hospital, radiant and blushing, ostensibly to congratulate me on recovery from my illness, really (little baggage!) to hear from my lips a word or two in praise of Randall.  Apparently he had come, in his warrior garb, seen, and conquered on the spot.  I saw Mrs. Holmes, who, gladdened by the Distinguished Conduct Medallist’s return, had wiped from her memory his abominably unfilial behaviour.  I saw Betty and I saw Boyce.

Now here I come to a point in this chronicle where I am faced by an appalling difficulty.  Hitherto I have striven to tell you no more about myself and my motives and feelings than was demanded by my purpose of unfolding to you the lives of others.  Primarily I wanted to explain Leonard Boyce.  I could only do it by showing you how he reacted on myself—­myself being an unimportant and uninteresting person.  It was all very well when I could stand aside and dispassionately analyse such reactions.  The same with regard to my dear Betty.  But now if I adopted the same method of telling you the story of Betty and the story of Boyce—­the method of reaction, so to speak—­I should be merely whining into your ears the dolorous tale of Duncan Meredyth, paralytic and idiot.

The deuce of it is that, for a long time, nothing particular or definite happened.  So how can I describe to you a very important period in the lives of Betty and Boyce and me?

I had to resume my intimacy with Boyce.  The blind and lonely man craved it and claimed it.  It would be an unmeaning pretence of modesty to under-estimate the value to him of my friendship.  He was a man of intense feelings.  Torture had closed his heart to the troops of friends that so distinguished a soldier might have had.  He granted admittance but to three, his mother, Betty and—­for some unaccountable