Byng jerked quickly to his feet and lunged forward as though he would do his visitor violence; but he got hold of himself in time, and, with a sudden and whimsical toss of the head, characteristic of him, he burst into a laugh.

“Well, I’ve been stung by a good many kinds of flies in my time, and I oughtn’t to mind, I suppose,” he growled....  “Oh, well, there,” he broke off; “you say you’re not welcome here?  If you really feel that, you’d better try to see me at my chambers—­or at the office in London Wall.  It can’t be pleasant inhaling air that chills or stifles you.  You take my advice, Barry, and save yourself annoyance.  But let me say in passing that you are as welcome here as anywhere, neither more nor less.  You are as welcome as you were in the days when we trekked from the Veal to Pietersburg and on into Bechuanaland, and both slept in the cape-wagon under one blanket.  I don’t think any more of you than I did then, and I don’t think any less, and I don’t want to see you any more or any fewer.  But, Barry”—­his voice changed, grew warmer, kinder—­” circumstances are circumstances.  The daily lives of all of us are shaped differently—­yours as well as mine—­here in this pudding-faced civilization and in the iron conventions of London town; and we must adapt ourselves accordingly.  We used to flop down on our Louis Quinze furniture on the Vaal with our muddy boots on—­in our front drawing-room.  We don’t do it in Thamesfontein, my noble buccaneer—­not even in Barry Whalen’s mansion in Ladbroke Square, where Barry Whalen, Esq., puts his silk hat on the hall table, and—­ and, ‘If you please, sir, your bath is ready’! . . .  Don’t be an idiot-child, Barry, and don’t spoil my best sentences when I let myself go.  I don’t do it often these days—­not since Jameson spilt the milk and the can went trundling down the area.  It’s little time we get for dreaming, these sodden days, but it’s only dreams that do the world’s work and our own work in the end.  It’s dreams that do it, Barry; it’s dreams that drive us on, that make us see beyond the present and the stupefying, deadening grind of the day.  So it’ll be Cape to Cairo in good time, dear lad, and no damnation, if you please....  Why, what’s got into you?  And again, what have you come to see me about, anyhow?  You knew we were to meet at dinner at Wallstein’s to-night.  Is there anything that’s skulking at our heels to hurt us?”

The scowl on Barry Whalen’s dissipated face cleared a little.  He came over, rested both hands on the table and leaned forward as he spoke, Byng resuming his seat meanwhile.

Barry’s voice was a little thick with excitement, but he weighed his words too.  “Byng, I wanted you to know beforehand what Fleming intends to bring up to-night—­a nice kind of reunion, isn’t it, with war ahead as sure as guns, and the danger of everything going to smash, in spite of Milner and Jo?”

A set look came into Byng’s face.  He caught the lapels of his big, loose, double-breasted jacket, and spread his feet a little, till he looked as though squaring himself to resist attack.