’I’m often quite lonely, Mr. Rolfe, and as one result of it I’m getting learned.  Look at these books.  Won’t you give me a word of admiration?’

There was a volume of Crowe and Cavalcaselle, one of Symonds’s ‘Renaissance’, Benvenuto’s ‘Memoirs’ in the original.

‘I can’t help clinging to the old world,’ she said sweetly.  ’Hugh forgives me, like a good boy; and you, I know, not only forgive, but sympathise.’

Of course, not a word passed with reference to Hugh Carnaby’s business; Redgrave’s name was not mentioned.  Sibyl, one felt, would decline to recognise, in her own drawing-room, the gross necessities of life.  Had bankruptcy been impending, she would have ignored it with the same perfection of repose.  An inscrutable woman, who could look and smile at one without conveying the faintest suggestion of her actual thoughts.

On his way to the club, Harvey puzzled over what seemed to him Redgrave’s singular behaviour.  Why should a man in that position volunteer pecuniary aid to an obscure and struggling firm?  Could it be genuine friendship for Hugh Carnaby?  That sounded most improbable.  Perhaps Redgrave, like the majority of people in his world, appeared much wealthier than he really was, and saw in Mackintosh’s business a reasonable hope of profit.  In that case, and if the concern began to flourish, might not an older friend of Carnaby’s find lucrative employment for his capital?

He had always thought with uttermost contempt of the man who allows himself to be gripped, worried, dragged down, by artificial necessities.  Was he himself to become a victim of this social disease?  Was he, resistless, to be drawn into the muddy whirlpool, to spin round and round among gibbering phantoms, abandoning himself with a grin of inane conceit, or clutching in desperation at futile hopes?  He remembered his tranquil life between the mountains and the sea; his earlier freedom, wandering in the sunlight of silent lands.  Surely there needed but a little common-sense, a little decision, to save himself from this rushing current.  One word to Alma —­ would it not suffice?  But of all things he dreaded to incur the charge of meanness, of selfishness.  That had ever been his weak point:  in youth, well-nigh a cause of ruin; in later life, impelling him to numberless insincerities and follies.

However, the danger as yet only threatened.  He was solvent; he had still a reserve.  It behoved him merely to avoid the risks of speculation, and to check, in natural, unobtrusive ways, that tendency to extravagance of living which was nowadays universal.  Could he not depend upon himself for this moderate manliness?