“Hullo!” he said, “some one sent you an infernal machine?”

Rawson-Clew roused himself.  “No,” he answered shortly.

He put the bottle back in the box after he had felt in the packing and found nothing, then he fastened it up with more care than was perhaps necessary.  He looked at the address on the lid, but it told him nothing more than it had at first; neither that nor the name of the post-office from which it was sent gave any clue to the sender.  And yet he felt as if Julia were at his elbow with that mute sympathy in her eyes which had been there when they talked of failure in the wood on the Dunes.

He rose, and taking the box, went towards the door; the other man watched him curiously.  “One would think you had found a ghost in your box,” he said.

“I’m not sure that I have not,” Rawson-Clew looked back to answer; “the ghost of a good comrade.”

Then he went home.

When he was alone in his chambers and secure from interruption, he opened the box again and took out all the packing, carefully sorting it.  But he found nothing, no scrap of paper, no clue of any sort; he took off the linen rag that fastened in the bottle stopper, but that betrayed nothing either; and yet he thought of Julia.

She was the only person who could know about the explosive.  It had never been actually spoken of last summer, but the chances were she knew.  She was the only person who could have known or who could have got it.  It was like her, so like that he was as sure as if her name were in the box that she was the sender.  How she had got the stuff he could not think, he knew the difficulties in the way; but she had done it somehow, and now she had sent it to him, without name for fear of embarrassing him, without clue, with no desire for thanks—­loyal, generous, able little comrade!  He looked up again; he felt as if she were bodily present; the whole thing, astounding as he had found it at first, was somehow so characteristic of her.  And because of her presence he suddenly wished he had not been to that evening’s entertainment and sat close by his cousin’s wife and heard the things she said, and answered the things she looked.  He felt as if he were not clean, as if he had no right to entertain even the ghost of the good comrade.

Rawson-Clew was not self-conscious; it never occurred to him to think if he appeared ridiculous, whether he was alone or in company.  He took off his dress coat and flung it aside with a feeling of disgust; its sleeve had brushed that woman’s bare arm; he could almost fancy that a suggestion of the scent she used clung to it.  He put it out of sight and fetched some other garment before he came back to the thing which had recalled Julia.  And yet the girl was no lily-child with the dew of dawn upon her; he did not for one instant think she was; probably, had she been, she would not have been the good comrade.  The facts of life were not strange to her, she knew them, good and bad; was not above laughing at what was funny even if it was somewhat coarse, but she had no taste for lascivious wallowing no matter under what name disguised.  A man could be at home with her, he could speak the truth to her; but he would not make a point of taking her into the society of that woman, any more than he would invite a friend to look at the sink, unless there was some purpose to serve.