He was half way down the first page when the door opened and Rex came in.

“Syd,” he exclaimed, “aren’t you coming home to dinner?  We waited till seven o’clock, then mother grew so worried that I came down to see if anything had happened.”

“How good you are to me, Reggie,” said the other.  “And how little I deserve it.”

His head went down on his two arms upon the desk.  His frame shook as if with sobbing.

“Syd, you dear old fellow, don’t talk that way.  What is troubling you?” Rex had put his arm about his brother’s neck; his forehead pressed close against the bowed head.

“Don’t, Reggie.  If you only knew you would not want to touch me.”

Sydney lifted his head suddenly, but his arms were still crossed over the half written letter.

“Syd, what do you mean?”

Rex looked at his brother in deep perplexity, his handsome brow wrinkled with the anxiety Sydney’s appearance and demeanor were causing him.

“You will know soon enough, Reggie, and then promise me that you will try to think of me as friendly as you can; not give away utterly to your contempt.  It was partly for y—.  No, I will not say that.  No, go home, Rex.  Tell mother I am all right, and will be back some time to-night, and not to worry.”

“But you ought not to stay here and work, Syd,” Rex persisted.  “You are not fit to do it.”

“I must do what I’ve set out to do.”  Sydney’s voice was almost stern as he made this reply.

Rex saw that it was useless to linger, and went sadly home.  Something dreadful had evidently come over Sydney.  What it was he did not pretend to know.  But he made up his mind not to tell the family all that Sydney had said.

It was nearly nine that night before the young lawyer finished the letter to Mrs. Fox to suit him.  He dropped it in the corner letter box on his way home, and then stepped in at a restaurant to at least go through the form of eating something.

“When shall I tell them at home about it?” was his one thought, and the ever recurring echo to it was, “Not yet! not yet!”

Almost his greatest trial of the day was forcing himself to remain in the library a half hour after he reached the house, and trying to appear himself.  He was conscious that Rex was watching him closely.

But it was natural for him to plead fatigue after a hard day’s work.  He locked himself in his room after he reached it.  With hands tightly pressed against his forehead, he sank into a chair.

“I foresaw all this,” he muttered.  “I knew that I must always suffer.  That what I did was done for others is no excuse; and now they must suffer, too.”

He slept this night from sheer exhaustion, but the sleep was much disturbed by dreams, in all of which a white haired old lady with the face of a fox seemed to be trying to do him some bodily injury.

The next day he seemed to exist for nothing but the arrival of the mails.  But night came, and no response to his letter to Mrs. Fox.