CHAPTER IV.

A PARAGRAPH IN "THE STANDARD."


Max did not stay long with his friend, but made the excuse that he was
half asleep, after a few minutes' rather desultory conversation, to go
back to his hotel.

It was with the greatest reluctance that he left his friend alone; but
Dudley had given him intimations, in every look and tone and movement,
that he wished to be by himself; and this fact increased the heaviness
of heart with which Max, full of forebodings on his friend's account,
had gone reluctantly down the creaking stairs.

Again and again Max asked himself, during his short walk from Lincoln's
Inn to Arundel Street, why he had not had the courage to put a question
or two straightforwardly to Dudley. As a matter of fact, however, the
reason was simple enough. The relative positions of the two men had been
suddenly reversed, and neither of them, as yet, felt easy under the new
conditions.

Dudley, the hard-working student, the rising barrister, the abstemious,
thoughtful, rather silent man to whom Max had looked up with respect and
affection, had suddenly sunk, during the last few hours, by some
unaccountable and mysterious means, to far below Max's own modest level.
It was he, the careless fellow whom Dudley had formerly admonished, who
had that evening been the sober, the temperate, the taciturn one; it was
he who had watched the other, been solicitous for him, trembled for him.