“I supposed,” he said, thoughtfully, “it might have been something like that.  Women are queer.  You think you know them, and then—­” He paused, confession hovering on his lips, but some delicacy restrained him.

“Women, Jerry, are the flavoring of society; I regret that I have a poor digestion for sauces.  I hope yours will be better.”

He laughed.  “Poor Roger; was she very pretty?”

“I can’t remember.  Probably.  Calf love seldom considers anything else—­prettiness!  Yes she was pretty.”

“How old were you?”

“Older than you Jerry—­and wiser.”

He was silent.  Once I thought he was about to speak, but he refrained, and when he deftly turned the topic, I knew that any chance I might have had to help him had passed.  I understood, of course, and I could not help respecting his delicacy.  Jerry was in for some hard knocks, I feared, harder ones than Clancy had given him.

He went to bed presently and I sat by the lamp alternately reading and thinking of Jerry, comparing him with myself in that long-distant romance of my own.  They were not unlike, these two women, pretty little self-worshipers, born to deceit and chicanery, with clever talents for concealing their ignorance, hiding the emptiness of their hearts with pretty tricks of coquetry.  But Marcia was the more dangerous, a clean body and an unclean mind.  A half-virgin!  I would have given much to know what had recently passed between Marcia and Jerry.  If there was any way to bring about a disillusionment—­

As though in answer to my enigma, at this moment Christopher came down from Jerry’s room on his way below stairs.  I stopped him and taking him into my study closed the door.

“You’re very fond of Master Jerry, Christopher?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, sir, Mr. Canby.”

“So am I, Christopher.  I think you know that, don’t you?”

“Why, yes, sir.  You’ve been a father to ’im, sir.  Nobody knows that better than me, sir.”

“We’d both go through fire and water for him, wouldn’t we, Christopher?”

“Oh, yes, sir; an’ if you please, sir, what with these prize fighters at the Manor an’ all, I rather think we ’ave, sir.”

I smiled.

“A bad business, but over for good, I think, Christopher.  But there are other things, worse in a way—­”

I paused, scrutinizing the man’s homely, impassive face.

“Did Master Jerry do much drinking before he went into training, Christopher?”

“A little, what any gentleman would, out in the world, sir.”

“You’ve noticed it since the fight?”

He hesitated.  Loyalty was bred in his bone.

“Yes, sir.”

“You know, Christopher, that I’ve spent my life trying to make Jerry a fine man?”

“You ’ave, sir.  It’s a pity—­the—­the drink.  But it can’t ’ave much of a ’old on ’im yet, sir.”

“Then you have noticed?”