"I think," said he quietly, "this conversation had better cease."

The owner of the back had moved, a little ostentatiously. He now got
up and crossed the room. The back was still towards the group of
talkers. Jewdwine followed its passage. He was fascinated. He gasped.

He could have sworn to that back anywhere, with its square but slender
shoulders, its defiant swing from the straight hips, the head tossed a
little backwards as if to correct the student's tendency to stoop. He
looked from the back to Maddox. Maddox could not see what he saw, but
his face reflected the horror of Jewdwine's.

Their voices were inaudible enough now.

"Do you know who it is?"

"I should think I did. It's the man himself."

"How truly damnable," said Rankin. After those words there was a
silence which Jewdwine, like the wise man he was, utilized for his
correspondence.

It was Maddox who recovered first. "Call him what you like," said he,
in a wonderfully natural voice, between two puffs of a cigarette, "I
consider him an uncommonly good sort. A bit of a bounder, but no end
of a good sort."

The others were evidently impressed by this bold though desperate
policy. Maddox himself was inclined to think that it had saved the
situation, but he was anxious to make sure. Edging his chair by slow