"We called you in for something else," said Tanno, "but first of all I
want to ask you why you were not with us at dinner? Caius has written me
again and again how he and you dine together evening after evening and how
you are so entertaining that he enjoys a dinner just with you almost as
much as if he has novel guests. Why were you left out of this? Is Hedulio
shy of more or less than nine at table, like his uncle, or does his
uncle's dining-room outfit coerce him? Or what _was_ the reason?"

Agathemer turned red and visibly writhed, mute and sweating.

I cut in.

"Here, Caius," I said to Tanno, "this isn't the torture chamber nor you
the executioner, nor yet has Agathemer deserved the rack. You are putting
him in an excruciating dilemma. He is too courteous to tell you that you
ought to ask me, not him, and he is too loyal to tell you the reason."

I was nearer to being angry with Tanno than I had ever been in our lives.
I comprehended why he, with all his superlative equipment of tact and
intuition, had blundered; he could not but assume that circumstances were
as they should have been rather than as they were; yet the blunder was, in
a sense, unforgivable, and had created a social situation than which
nothing could be more awkward.

Agathemer's face cleared as I spoke.

Tanno rounded on me.

"You tell me, then!" he said. "I guess from their faces that I have