* * * * *

They talked long, before they went to sleep that night.  The Rat grew pale as he listened to the story of the woman in violet.

“I ought to have gone with you!” he said.  “I see now.  An aide-de-camp must always be in attendance.  It would have been harder for her to manage two than one.  I must always be near to watch, even if I am not close by you.  If you had not come back—­if you had not come back!” He struck his clenched hands together fiercely.  “What should I have done!”

When Marco turned toward him from the table near which he was standing, he looked like his father.

“You would have gone on with the Game just as far as you could,” he said.  “You could not leave it.  You remember the places, and the faces, and the Sign.  There is some money; and when it was all gone, you could have begged, as we used to pretend we should.  We have not had to do it yet; and it was best to save it for country places and villages.  But you could have done it if you were obliged to.  The Game would have to go on.”

The Rat caught at his thin chest as if he had been struck breathless.

“Without you?” he gasped.  “Without you?”

“Yes,” said Marco.  “And we must think of it, and plan in case anything like that should happen.”

He stopped himself quite suddenly, and sat down, looking straight before him, as if at some far away thing he saw.

“Nothing will happen,” he said.  “Nothing can.”

“What are you thinking of?” The Rat gulped, because his breath had not quite come back.  “Why will nothing happen?”

“Because—­” the boy spoke in an almost matter-of-fact tone—­in quite an unexalted tone at all events, “you see I can always make a strong call, as I did tonight.”

“Did you shout?” The Rat asked.  “I didn’t know you shouted.”

“I didn’t.  I said nothing aloud.  But I—­the myself that is in me,” Marco touched himself on the breast, “called out, ‘Help!  Help!’ with all its strength.  And help came.”

The Rat regarded him dubiously.

“What did it call to?” he asked.

“To the Power—­to the Strength-place—­to the Thought that does things.  The Buddhist hermit, who told my father about it, called it ’The Thought that thought the World.’”

A reluctant suspicion betrayed itself in The Rat’s eyes.

“Do you mean you prayed?” he inquired, with a slight touch of disfavor.

Marco’s eyes remained fixed upon him in vague thoughtfulness for a moment or so of pause.

“I don’t know,” he said at last.  “Perhaps it’s the same thing—­when you need something so much that you cry out loud for it.  But it’s not words, it’s a strong thing without a name.  I called like that when I was shut in the wine-cellar.  I remembered some of the things the old Buddhist told my father.”

The Rat moved restlessly.

“The help came that time,” he admitted.  “How did it come to-night?”