“It’s only because I haven’t slept,” Sydney hastened to assure him.

“Then what are you getting up for?” Roy went on.

“I must go down town.  I have that to do which will ease my mind, and make me all right again, I trust.”

The last words were added in so low a tone as to be scarcely audible.

“Oh, Syd, what is it?  What is worrying you?  Can’t I help you in any way?”

“No, Roy, you cannot now.  Perhaps—­ later—­ I will need—­ need your pity.”

“Pity!  Oh, Syd, you do not know what you say.”

“Don’t, Roy.  I have a hard task to perform; do not, I beg of you, make it harder.”

Roy said no more; he would not after this.  He went back to his own room and went over in his mind all that had befallen them since they had been what the world called wealthy.

“Not one bit happier, though; no, not as happy,” he added for himself.

At the breakfast table Sydney insisted that he felt plenty well enough to go to the office.

“Can’t you see, mother,” he said at last, “that it is a matter of the mind and not of the body.  Let me have the opportunity of easing that, and—­ you will see the result.”

But when he left the house he did not go at once to his office.  He stopped at the first drug store he passed, and walked up to the little stand on which the city directory was kept.

He turned the pages to D, and then looked up Darley.

There were several of the name, and a frown contracted his brow.  But he took out his pencil and memorandum book, and made a note of the various addresses.  Then he went on, but soon turned into a street that would not take him to the office.  He boarded a car and rode off in the direction of South street.  In the course of twenty minutes he was waiting for his ring to be answered at the door of a very modest little house near the Baltimore tracks.

But after he had been admitted, he did not remain long inside.

“I must try another,” he muttered, consulting his memorandum.

He tried several others, but with equal ill success.  The quest seemed hopeless.

“There may be nothing in it after all,” he murmured.  “But that does not lighten my load here;” and he pressed his hand over his heart.

All that day he kept up his hunt, scarcely stopping to get a little lunch at noon.  Toward nightfall he called at an address on Seventh Street next to the last on his list.

It was an odd looking house—­ apparently a store, for there was a regular shop window, but there was nothing in it but curtains that screened off the interior, and no sign, and the door when he tried it, was locked.  But there was a bell handle close beside it, and this he pulled.

The door was opened after quite an interval, to a mere crack, and the voice of an aged woman wanted to know who was there.

“A gentleman to see Mr. David Darley,” Sydney answered.