“I have no more to do with God,” said Stafford.

“Then the devil help you, if you rely on him!”

“Don’t be angry,” he said, with a swift return of his old sweet smile.  “In old days I should have liked your indignation.  I still like you for it.  But I have made my choice.”

“‘Evil, be thou my good.’  Is that it?”

“Yes, if you like.  Why talk about it any more?  It is done.”

He turned and walked away, leaving Morewood alone to finish his forgotten lunch.

He could not get the thought of the man out of his mind all day.  It was with him as he worked, and with him when he sat after dinner in the parlor of his little inn, with his pipe and whisky and water.  He was so full of Stafford that he could not resist the impulse to tell somebody else, and at last he took a sheet of paper.

“I don’t know if he’s in town,” he said, “but I’ll chance it;” and he began: 

     “DEAR AYRE: 

“By chance down here I met the parson.  He is mad.  He painted for me the passion of belief—­which he said I hadn’t and implied I couldn’t feel.  He threatened to paint the passion of love, with the same assertion and the same implication.  He is convinced that if he breaks his vow (you remember it, of course) he’ll be worse than Satan.  Yet his face is set to break it.  You probably can’t help it, and wouldn’t if you could, for you haven’t heard him.  He’s going to London.  Stop him if you can before he gets to Claudia Territon.  I tell you his state of mind is hideous.

     “Yours,

     “A.  MOREWOOD.”

This somewhat incoherent letter reached Sir Roderick Ayre as he passed through London, and tarried a day or two in early October.  He opened it, read it, and put it down on the breakfast-table.  Then he read it again, and ejaculated.

“Talk about madness!  Why, because Stafford’s mad—­if he is mad—­must our friend the painter go mad too?  Not that I see he is mad.  He’s only been stirring up old Morewood’s dormant piety.”

He lit his cigar, and sat pondering the letter.

“Shall I try to stop him?  If Claudia and Eugene have fixed up things it would be charitable to prevent him making a fool of himself.  Why the deuce haven’t I heard anything from that young rascal?  Hullo! who’s that?”

He heard a voice outside, and the next moment Eugene himself rushed in.

“Here you are!” he said.  “Thought I should find you.  You can’t keep away from this dirty old town.”

“Where do you spring from?” asked Ayre.

“Liverpool.  I found the Continent slow, so I went to America.  Nothing moving there, so I came back here.  Can you give me breakfast?”

Ayre rang the bell, and ordered a new breakfast; as he did so he took up Morewood’s letter and put it in his pocket.

Eugene went on talking with gay affectation about his American experiences.  Only when he was through his breakfast did he approach home topics.