Nelton’s lowered eyes flashed a shrewd look at Lewis’s face.

“The exercise of discretion ennobles the profession,” he said, and stopped, a dazed, pleased look in his face at hearing his own rhyme.  He laid the table-cloth down, took from his pocket the stub of a pencil, and wrote the words on his cuff.  Then he picked up the cloth, laid it over his arm, and opened the door.  As he went out he paused and said over his shoulder:  “Master Lewis, it would hurt the governor’s feelin’s if you asked him or anybody else how he got the nime of Gripes.”

Let a man but feel lonely, and his mind immediately harks along the back trail of the past.  In his lonely week Lewis frequently found himself thinking back.  It was only by thinking back that he could stay in the flat at all.  Now for the first time he realized that he had been stepping through life with seven-league boots.  The future could not possibly hold for him the tremendous distances of his past.  How far he had come since that first dim day at Consolation Cottage!

To every grown-up there is a dim day that marks the beginning of things, the first remembered day of childhood.  Lewis could not fasten on any memory older than the memory of a rickety cab, a tall, gloomy man, and then a white-clad group on the steps of Consolation Cottage.  Black mammy, motherly Mrs. Leighton, curly-headed Shenton, and little Natalie, with her ‘wumpled’ skirt, who had stood on tiptoe to put her lips to his, appeared before him now as part of the dawn of life.

As he looked back, he saw that the sun had risen hot on his day of life.  It had struck down Shenton, blasted the Reverend Orme, withered Ann Leighton, and had turned plump little Natalie’s body into a thin, wiry home for hope.  Natalie had always demanded joy even of little things.  Did she still demand it?  Where was Natalie?  Lewis asked himself the question and felt a twinge of self-reproach.  Life had been so full for him that he had not stopped to think how empty it might be for Natalie, his friend.

How little he had done to trace her!  Only the one letter.  He decided to write again, this time to Dom Francisco.  If only he could talk to Natalie, what long tours it would take to tell and to hear all!  A faint flush of anticipation was rising to his cheeks when a rap on the door startled him.  Before he could look around Nelton announced, “A lady to see you, sir.”

Lewis leaped to his feet and stepped forward.  Had one of the miracles he had been taught to believe in come to pass?  Had prayer been answered?  The lady raised her arms and started to take off her veil.  Then she turned her back to Lewis.

“Do untie it for me,” she drawled in the slow voice of Lady Violet Manerlin.

Lewis felt his face fall, and was glad she had her back to him.  He undid her veil with steady, leisurely fingers.

“This is awfully good of you,” he said.  “How did you know I was alone?”