Dick brought his meditations to a close with equal abruptness, or perhaps he would not have been so caustic as regards his first cousin.

“Oh, Archie’s an ass!” he said.  “We can leave him out.”

Jack changed the subject again.  He was feeling the situation very acutely indeed, and the result was that all its elements came tumbling out anyhow.

“I’ve been beastly uncomfortable,” he said.

“Yes?” said Dick.  “Any particular way?”

Jack shifted one leg over the other.  He had not approached one element in the situation at all, as yet, with Dick, but it had been simmering in him for weeks, and had been brought to a point by Frank’s letter received this morning.  And now the curious intimacy into which he had been brought with Dick began to warm it out of him.

“You’ll think me an ass, too, I expect,” he said.  “And I rather think it’s true.  But I can’t help it.”

Dick smiled at him encouragingly. (Certainly, thought Jack, this man was nicer than he had thought him.)

“Well, it’s this—­” he said suddenly.  “But it’s frightfully hard to put into words.  You know what I told you about Frank’s coming to me at Barham?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there was something he said then that made me uncomfortable.  And it’s made me more and more uncomfortable ever since ...” (He paused again.) “Well, it’s this.  He said that he felt there was something going on that he couldn’t understand—­some sort of Plan, he said—­in which he had to take part—­a sort of scheme to be worked out, you know.  I suppose he meant God,” he explained feebly.

Dick looked at him questioningly.

“Oh!  I can’t put it into words,” said Jack desperately.  “Nor did he, exactly.  But that was the kind of idea.  A sort of Fate.  He said he was quite certain of it....  And there were lots of little things that fitted in.  He changed his clothes in the old vestry, you know—­in the old church.  It seemed like a sort of sacrifice, you know.  And then I had a beastly dream that night.  And then there was something my mother said....  And now there’s his letter:  the one I showed you at dinner—­about something that might happen to him....  Oh!  I’m a first-class ass, aren’t I?”

There was a considerable silence.  He glanced up in an ashamed sort of way, at the other, and saw him standing quite upright and still, again with his back to the fire, looking out across the room.  From outside came the hum of the thoroughfare—­the rolling of wheels, the jingle of bells, the cries of human beings.  He waited in a kind of shame for Dick’s next words.  He had not put all these feelings into coherent form before, even to himself, and they sounded now even more fantastic than he had thought them.  He waited, then, for the verdict of this quiet man, whom up to now he had deemed something of a fool, who cared about nothing but billiards and what was called Art. (Jack loathed Art.)