“Who doesn’t know what?  And if who did?” roared Rickman, overcome with laughter.

“Sh—­sh—­sh—­Flossie.  I mean—­M—­miss Walker.”

Rickman stopped laughing and looked at young Spinks with something like compassion.  “I say, old chap, what do you mean?”

“I mean that I should have gone off my chump if I’d hung on at that place.  I couldn’t get her out of my mind, not even in the shop.  I used to lie awake at nights, thinking of her.  And then, you know—­I couldn’t eat.”

“In fact, you were pretty bad, were you?”

“Oh, well, I just chucked it up and came here.  It’s all right, Razors; you needn’t mind.  I never had a chance with her.  She never gave me so much as a thought.  Not a thought.  It’s the queerest thing.  I couldn’t tell you how I got into this state—­I don’t know myself.  Only now she’s engaged and so forth, you might think that—­well, you might think”—­young Spinks had evidently come to the most delicate and complicated part of his explanation—­“well, that I’d no right to go on getting into states.  But when it doesn’t make any difference to her, and it can’t matter to you—­” He paused; but Rickman gathered that what he wished to plead was that in those circumstances he was clearly welcome to his “state.”  “I mean that if it’s all up with me, you know, it’s all right—­I mean, it’s safe enough—­for you.”

Poor Spinks became lost in the maze of his own beautiful sentiments.  Adoration for Rickman (himself the soul of honour) struggled blindly with his passion for Flossie Walker.  But the thought, which his brain had formed, which his tongue refused to utter, was that the hopelessness of his passion made it no disloyalty to his friend.  “It can make no difference to her, my being here,” he said simply.

“Nonsense, you’ve as much right to be here as I have.”

“Yes, but under the circumstances, it mightn’t have been perfectly fair to you.  See?”

“My dear Spinky, it’s perfectly fair to me; but is it—­you won’t mind me suggesting it—­is it perfectly fair to yourself?”

Spinks sat silent for a minute, laying his hand upon the place of, thought, as if trying to take that idea in.  “Yes,” he said deliberately.  “That’s all right.  In fact, nothing else will do my business.  It sounds queer; but that’s the only way to get her out of my head.  You see, when I see her I don’t think about her; but when I don’t see her I can’t think of anything else.”

Rickman was interested.  It struck him that latterly he had been affected in precisely the opposite way.  It was curious to compare young Sidney’s sensations with his own.  He forgot all about the man in Baker Street.

“I don’t mean to say I shall ever get over it.  When a man goes through this sort of business it leaves its mark on him somewhere.”  And indeed it seemed to have stamped an expression of permanent foolishness on Spinks’s comely face.