“I believe I am on the right track, but I don’t like it, Joicey.  I’m damned if I do.”

“Why not?”

“It comes too close to home,”—­Hartley spoke with a jerk.  “A hateful job—­I thought I’d tell you—­” He spoke in broken sentences, and his words affected the Banker very perceptibly.

“Can’t you drop it?”

Joicey came to a standstill, and his voice was lowered almost to a whisper.

“I wish to Heaven I could, but it’s a question of duty,”—­he could hardly see Joicey’s face in the gathering gloom.  “I suppose you guess what I’m driving at, Joicey, though how you guess, I don’t know.”

“I think I’ll say good night here, Hartley,”—­the Banker’s voice was unnatural and wavering.  “I can’t discuss it with you.  It’s got to be proved,” he spoke more heatedly.  “What have you got?  Only the word of a stinking native.  I tell you it’s monstrous.”  He stopped and clutched Hartley’s arm, and seemed as though he was staggering.

“What has come over you, Joicey; are you ill?”

“I’ll sit down here for a moment,”—­Joicey walked towards a low wall.  “Sometimes I get these attacks.  I’m better after they are over.  Better, much better.  Leave me here to go back by myself, Hartley.  You need have no fear, I’m over it now; I’ll rest for a little and then go my way quickly.  Believe me, I’d rather be alone.”

Very reluctantly, Hartley quitted him.  He felt that Joicey was ill, and might even be beginning the horrible phase of “breaking up,” which comes on with such fatal speed in a tropical climate.  He went back after he had gone a mile along the road, but Joicey was no longer there.  It was too late to think of going to the Club, for the road that Joicey and Hartley had followed led away from the residential quarter of Mangadone, and he disliked the idea of going back to his own bungalow and waiting through the dismal hour that lies across the evening between the time to come in and the time to dress for dinner.

Had there been a friendly house near, Hartley would have gone in on the chance of finding someone at home, but as there was not, he made the best of existing circumstances and took his way along the road towards his own bungalow.  He could not deny that his walk with Joicey had only served to depress his spirits, and he was sorry to think that his friend was so obviously in bad health.  The world seemed an uncomfortable place, full of gloomy surprises, and Hartley wished that he had a wife to go back to.  Not a superb being like Mrs. Wilder, who was encircled by the halo of High Romance, but just an ordinary wife, with a friendly smile and a way of talking about everyday things while she darned socks.  Somewhere in his domestic heart Hartley considered sock-mending a beautiful and symbolic act, and yet he could not picture Mrs. Wilder occupied in such a fashion.

A man with a wife to go back to is never at the same loose end as a man who has no need ever to be punctual for a solitary meal, and Hartley walked quickly because he wanted to get clear of his depression, rather than for any reason that compelled him to be up to time.