“You’re perfectly welcome to go to town,” insisted Portlaw, alarmed.

“I know it,” nodded Malcourt coolly.  “Now, if you’ll take my advice you’ll behave less like a pig in this Ascott matter.”

“I’m going to fight that suit—­”

“Certainly fight it.  But not the way you’re planning.”

“Well—­how, then?”

“Go and see the little lady.”

“See her?  She wouldn’t receive me.”

“Probably not.  That’s unimportant.  For heaven’s sake, Portlaw, you’re becoming chuckle-headed with all your feeding and inertia and pampered self-indulgence.  You’re the limit!—­with your thirty-eight-inch girth and your twin chins and baby wrists!  You know, it’s pitiable when I think what a clean-cut, decent-looking, decently set-up fellow you were only two years ago!—­it’s enough to make a cat sick!”

“Can I help what I look like!” bellowed Portlaw wrathfully.

“What an idiot question!” said Malcourt with weary patience.  “All you’ve got to do is to cuddle yourself less, and go out into the fresh air on your ridiculous legs—­”

“Ridiculous!” gasped the other.  “Well, I’m damned if I stand that—!”

“You won’t be able to stand at all if you continue eating and sitting in arm-chairs.  You don’t like what I say, do you?” with easy impudence.  “Well, I said it to sting you—­if there’s any sensation left under your hide.  And I’ll say something else:  if you’d care for somebody beside yourself for a change and give the overworked Ego a vacation, you’d get along with your pretty neighbour yonder.  Oh, yes, you would; she was quite inclined to like you before you began to turn, physically, into a stall-fed prize winner.  You’re only thirty-seven or eight; you’ve a reasonable chance yet to exchange obesity for perspicacity before it smothers what intellect remains.  And if you’re anything except what you’re beginning to resemble you’ll stop sharp, behave yourself, go to see your neighbour, and”—­with a shrug—­“marry her.  Marriage—­as easy a way out of trouble as it is in.”

He swung carelessly on his heel, supple, erect, graceful as always.

“But,” he threw back over his shoulder, “you’d better acquire the rudiments of a figure before you go a-courting Alida Ascott.”  And left Portlaw sitting petrified in his wadded chair.

Malcourt strolled on, a humorously malicious smile hovering near his eyes, but his face grew serious as he glanced up at Hamil’s window.  He had not seen Hamil during his illness or his convalescence—­had made no attempt to, evading lightly the casual suggestions of Portlaw that he and his young wife pay Hamil a visit; nor did he appear to take anything more than a politely perfunctory interest in the sick man’s progress; yet Constance Palliser had often seen him pacing the lawn under Hamil’s window long after midnight during those desperate hours when the life-flame scarcely flickered—­those ominous moments when so many souls go out to meet the impending dawn.