“You’ll never stand the routine, old chap!”

“And what about your own work!”

“What will the Daily Scribbler people say?”

Aynesworth shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t imagine it will last very long,” he answered, “and I shall get a fair amount of time to myself.  The work I do on the Daily Scribbler doesn’t amount to anything.  It was a chance I simply couldn’t refuse.”

The editor of a well-known London paper leaned back in his chair, and pinched a cigar carefully.

“You’ll probably find the whole thing a sell,” he remarked.  “The story, as Lovell told it, sounded dramatic enough, and if the man were to come back to life again, fresh and vigorous, things might happen, provided, of course, that Lovell was right in his suppositions.  But ten or twelve years’ solitary confinement, although it mayn’t sound much on paper, is enough to crush all the life and energy out of a man.”

Aynesworth shook his head.

“You haven’t seen him,” he said.  “I have!”

“What’s he like, Walter?” another man asked.

“I can’t describe him,” Aynesworth answered.  “I shouldn’t like to try.  I’ll bring him here some day.  You fellows shall see him for yourselves.  I find him interesting enough.”

“The whole thing,” the editor declared, “will fizzle out.  You see if it doesn’t?  A man who’s just spent ten or twelve years in prison isn’t likely to run any risk of going there again.  There will be no tragedy; more likely reconciliation.”

“Perhaps,” Aynesworth said imperturbably.  “But it wasn’t only the possibility of anything of that sort happening, you know, which attracted me.  It was the tragedy of the man himself, with his numbed, helpless life, set down here in the midst of us, with a great, blank chasm between him and his past.  What is there left to drive the wheels?  The events of one day are simple and monotonous enough to us, because they lean up against the events of yesterday, and the yesterdays before!  How do they seem, I wonder, to a man whose yesterday was more than a decade of years ago!”

The editor nodded.

“It must be a grim sensation,” he admitted, “but I am afraid with you, my dear Walter, it is an affair of shop.  You wish to cull from your interesting employer the material for that every-becoming novel of yours.  Let’s go upstairs!  I’ve time for one pool.”

“I haven’t,” Aynesworth answered.  “I’ve a commission to do.”

He left the club and walked westwards, humming softly to himself, but thinking all the time intently.  His errand disturbed him.  He was to be the means of bringing together again these two people who had played the principal parts in Lovell’s drama—­his new employer and the woman who had ruined his life.  What was the object of it?  What manner of vengeance did he mean to deal out to her?  Lovell’s words of premonition returned to him just then with curious insistence—­he was so certain that Wingrave’s reappearance would lead to tragical happenings.  Aynesworth himself never doubted it.  His brief interview with the man into whose service he had almost forced himself had impressed him wonderfully.  Yet, what weapon was there, save the crude one of physical force, with which Wingrave could strike?