With a gesture half-hopeless, half-appealing, he turned and walked to the window, as if he could no longer bear to meet the level, grey eyes that watched him with so kindly a confidence.

There fell a silence in the room while Mordaunt, still sitting on the writing-table, deliberately finished his cigarette.  That done, he spoke.

“Don’t you think you had better tell me what is the matter?”

Bertrand jerked his shoulders convulsively; it was the only response he made.

Mordaunt waited a few moments more.  Then, “Very well,” he said, without change of tone or countenance.  “We will dismiss the subject.  If you really mean to leave me, I will accept your resignation in the morning, but not to-night.  If—­as I hope—­you have thought better of it by then and decide to remain, nothing further need be said.  Will that satisfy you?”

Bertrand wheeled abruptly, and stood facing him, the length of the room intervening.  His mouth worked as if he were trying to speak, but he said nothing whatever.

Mordaunt turned without further words to the letter in his hand, and studied it in silence.  After a pause Bertrand came slowly back to the writing-table.  He had mastered his agitation, but he looked unutterably tired.

Mordaunt moved to one side at his approach.  “Sit down!” he said, without raising his eyes.

Bertrand sat down, and began to turn his attention to sorting the letters he had opened.  Mordaunt stood motionless, reading with bent brows.

Suddenly he spoke.  “There is something here I can’t understand.”

Bertrand glanced up.  “Can I assist?”

“I don’t know.  Read that!” Mordaunt laid the letter before him.  “I can’t account for it.  I think it must be a mistake.”

Bertrand took the letter and read it.  It was an intimation from the bank that in consequence of the bearer cheque for five hundred pounds presented and cashed the week before, Mordaunt’s account was overdrawn.

“What cheque can it be?” Mordaunt said.  “Have you any idea?”

Bertrand shook his head.  “But no!  It is perhaps some charity—­a gift that you have forgotten?”

“My good fellow, I may be careless, but I’m not so damned careless as that.”  Mordaunt pulled out a bunch of keys with the words.  “Let me have a look at my cheque-book.  You know where it is.”

Yes, Bertrand knew.  He was as cognizant of the whereabouts of Mordaunt’s possessions as if they had been his own, and he had as free an access to them.  Such was the confidence reposed in him.

He took the keys, selected the right one, stooped to fit it into the lock.  And then suddenly something happened.  A violent tremor went through him.  He clutched at the table-edge, and the keys clattered to the ground.

“Hullo!” Mordaunt said.

Bertrand was staring downwards with eyes that saw not.  At the sound of Mordaunt’s voice he started, and began to grope on the floor for the keys as if stricken blind.