“But you must have some idea,” he insisted.

“I haven’t; any more than the general one that they won’t let the grass grow under their feet.”

“No.  God blast the whole—­I wish I could swear in Sanscrit.  The mother-tongue doesn’t begin to do justice to it.  Now I know what Bucks meant when he told me to take my railroad, if I could get it.  He had the whole thing coopered up in a barrel at that minute.”

“I take it you have no alternative to this,” said the editor, tapping the pile of affidavits.

“Not a cursed shred of an idea!  And, Hildreth—­” he broke off short because once again the subject suddenly grew too large for coherent speech.

Hildreth disentangled himself from the legs of his chair and stood up to put his hands on Kent’s shoulders.

“You are up against it hard, David,” he said; and he repeated:  “I’d give all my old shoes to be able to help you out.”

“I know it,” said Kent; and then he turned abruptly and went away.

Between nine and ten o’clock the same evening Kent was walking the floor of his room, trying vainly to persuade himself that virtue was its own reward, and wondering if a small dose of chloral hydrate would be defensible under the cruel necessity for sleep.  He had about decided in favor of the drug when a tap at the door announced the coming of a bell-boy with a note.  It was a message from Portia.

“If you have thrown away your chance definitely, and are willing to take a still more desperate one, come to see me,” she wrote; and he went mechanically, as a drowning man catches at a straw, knowing it will not save him.

The house in Alameda Square was dark when he went up the walk; and while he was feeling for the bell-push his summoner called to him out of the electric stencilings of leaf shadows under the broad veranda.

“It is too fine a night to stay indoors,” she said.  “Come and sit in the hammock while I scold you as you deserve.”  And when he had taken the hammock:  “Now give an account of yourself.  Where have you been for the past age or two?”

“Wallowing around in the lower depths of the place that Dante visited,” he admitted.

“Don’t you think you deserve a manhandling?”

“I suppose so; and if you have it in mind, I shall probably get it.  But I may say I’m not especially anxious for a tongue-lashing to-night.”

“Poor boy!” she murmured, in mock sympathy.  “Does it hurt to be truly good?”

“Try it some time when you have a little leisure, and see for yourself,” he retorted.

She laughed.

“No; I’ll leave that for the Miss Brentwoods.  By the way, did you go to tell the household good-by?  Penelope was wondering audibly what had become of you.”

“I didn’t know they were gone.  I have been nowhere since the night you drove me out with contumely and opprobrium.”

She laughed again.