CHAPTER IV.

A paragraph in “The Standard.”

Max did not stay long with his friend, but made the excuse that he was half asleep, after a few minutes’ rather desultory conversation, to go back to his hotel.

It was with the greatest reluctance that he left his friend alone; but Dudley had given him intimations, in every look and tone and movement, that he wished to be by himself; and this fact increased the heaviness of heart with which Max, full of forebodings on his friend’s account, had gone reluctantly down the creaking stairs.

Again and again Max asked himself, during his short walk from Lincoln’s Inn to Arundel Street, why he had not had the courage to put a question or two straightforwardly to Dudley.  As a matter of fact, however, the reason was simple enough.  The relative positions of the two men had been suddenly reversed, and neither of them, as yet, felt easy under the new conditions.

Dudley, the hard-working student, the rising barrister, the abstemious, thoughtful, rather silent man to whom Max had looked up with respect and affection, had suddenly sunk, during the last few hours, by some unaccountable and mysterious means, to far below Max’s own modest level.  It was he, the careless fellow whom Dudley had formerly admonished, who had that evening been the sober, the temperate, the taciturn one; it was he who had watched the other, been solicitous for him, trembled for him.

Max could not understand.  He lay awake worrying himself about his friend, feeling Dudley’s fall more acutely than he would have felt his own, and did not fall asleep until it was nearly daylight.

In these circumstances he overslept himself, and it was eleven o’clock before he found himself in the hotel coffee-room, waiting for his breakfast.

He was in the act of pouring out his coffee, when his name, uttered behind him in a familiar voice, made him start.  The next moment Dudley Horne stood by his side, and holding out his hand with a smile, seated himself on the chair beside him.

“I—­I—­I overslept myself this morning,” stammered Max.

He was in a state of absolute bewilderment.  Not only had the new Dudley of the previous night disappeared, with his alternate depression and feverish high spirits, his furtive glances, his hoarse and altered voice, but the old Dudley, who had returned, seemed happier and livelier than usual.

“Town and its wicked ways don’t agree with you, my boy, nor do they with me.  If I were in your shoes, I shouldn’t tread the streets of Babylon more than once a twelvemonth.”

“You think that now,” returned Max, “because you see more than enough of town.”

“Well, I’m not going to see much more of it at present,” retorted Dudley.  “This afternoon I’m off again down to Datton, and I came to ask whether you were coming down with me.”