“Easy!” said Nick.  “Easy!  Just drink this like a good chap.  There’s no sense in letting yourself go.”

Will drank submissively, and covered his face.  “Oh, man,” he whispered brokenly, “you don’t know what it is to be despised by the one being in the world you worship.”

Nick said nothing.  His lips twitched a little, that was all.

But when several miserable seconds had dragged away and Will had not moved, he bent suddenly down and put his arm round the huddled shoulders.  “Keep a stiff upper lip, old chap,” he urged gently.  “Don’t knock under.  She’ll be coming to you for comfort presently.”

“Not she!” groaned Will.  “I shall never get near her again.  She’ll never come back to me.  I know.  I know.”

“Don’t be a fool!” said Nick still gently.  “You don’t know.  Of course she will come back to you.  If you stick to her, she’ll stick to you.”

Will made a choked sound of dissent.  Nevertheless, after a moment he raised his quivering face, and gripped hard the hand that pressed his shoulder.  “Thanks, dear fellow!  You’re awfully good.  Forgive me for making an ass of myself.  I—­I was awfully fond of the little nipper too.  Poor Daisy!  She’ll be frightfully cut up.”  He broke off, biting his lips.

“Do you know,” he said presently in a strained whisper, “I’ve wanted her sometimes—­so horribly, that—­that I’ve even been fool enough to pray about it.”

He glanced up as he made this confidence, half expecting to read ridicule on the alert face above him, but the expression it wore surprised him.  It was almost a fighting look, and wholly free from contempt.

Nick seated himself on the edge of the table, and smote him on the shoulder.  “My dear chap,” he said, with a sudden burst of energy, “you’re only at the beginning of things.  It isn’t just praying now and then that does it.  You’ve got to keep up the steam, never slack for an instant, whatever happens.  The harder going it is, the more likely you are to win through if you stick to it.  But directly you slack, you lose ground.  If you’ve only got the grit to go on praying, praying hard, even against your own convictions, you’ll get it sooner or later.  You are bound to get it.  They say God doesn’t always grant prayer because the thing you want may not do you any good.  That’s gammon—­futile gammon.  If you want it hard enough, and keep on clamouring for it, it becomes the very thing of all others you need—­the great essential.  And you’ll get it for that very reason.  It’s sheer pluck that counts, nothing else—­the pluck to go on fighting when you know perfectly well you’re beaten, the pluck to hang on and worry, worry, worry, till you get your heart’s desire.”

He sprang up with a wide-flung gesture.  “I’m doing it myself,” he said, and his voice rang with a certain grim elation.  “I’m doing it myself.  And God knows I sha’n’t give Him any peace till I’m satisfied.  I may be small, but if I were no bigger than a mosquito, I’d keep on buzzing.”