“Oh my Aunt!” said Rankin, dallying with his despair.

“It isn’t half a bad idea.  Try it.”

They tried it.  Maddox raised the poet’s head and Rankin poured the brandy into him.  Rankin’s hand was gentle, but there was a sternness about Maddox and his ministrations.  And as the brandy brought the blood back to his brain, Rickman sat up on Rankin’s bed, murmuring apologies that would have drawn pity from the nether mill-stone.  But there was no sign of the tenderness that had warmed him when he came.  He could see that they were anxious to get him out of the house.  Since they had been so keen on reconciliation whence this change to hostility and disapproval?  Oh, of course, he remembered; he had been ill (outrageously ill) in Rankin’s dressing-room.  Perhaps it wasn’t very nice of him; still he didn’t do it for his own amusement, and Rankin might have been as ill as he liked in his dressing-room, if he had had one.  Even admitting that the nature of his calamity was such as to place him beyond the pale of human sympathy, he thought that Rankin might have borne himself with a somewhat better grace.  And why Maddox should have taken that preposterous tone—­

Maddox explained himself as they left Sussex Square.

Rickman did not at first take in the explanation.  He was thinking how he could best circumvent Maddox’s obvious intention of hailing a hansom and putting him into it.  He didn’t want to confess that he hadn’t a shilling in his pocket.  Coppers anybody may be short of, and presently he meant to borrow twopence for a bus.  Later on he would have to ask for a loan of fifty pounds; for you can borrow pounds and you can borrow pennies, but not shillings.  Not at any rate if you are starving.

“If I were you, Ricky,” Maddox was saying.  “I should go straight to bed when you get home.  You’ll be all right in the morning.”

“I’m all right now.  I can’t think what bowled me over.”

“Ricky, the prevarication is unworthy of you.  Without humbug, I think you might keep off it a bit before you dine with people.  It doesn’t matter about us, you know, but it’s hardly the sort of thing Mrs. Rankin’s been accustomed to.”

“Mrs. Rankin?”

“Well yes, I said Mrs. Rankin; but it’s not about her I care—­it’s about you.  Of course you’ll tell me to mind my own business, but I wish—­I wish to goodness you’d give it up—­altogether.  You did once, why not again?  Believe me the game isn’t worth the candle.”  And he said to himself, noting the sharp lines of his friend’s haggard figure, “It’s killing him.”