“Little Beryl Clare, when she took the risk of becoming his wife.  That was the turning point.  He had got so far that his own fast set had thrown him over.  There is a world of difference, you know, between a man who drinks and a drunkard.  They all drink, but they taboo a drunkard.  He had become a slave to it—­hopeless and helpless.  Then she stepped in, saw the possibilities of a fine man in the wreck, took her chance in marrying him though she might have had the pick of a dozen, and, by devoting her life to it, brought him back to manhood and decency.  You have observed that no liquor is ever kept in the house.  There never has been any since her foot crossed its threshold.  A drop of it would be like blood to a tiger even now.”

“Then her influence still holds him?”

“That is the wonder of it.  When she died three years ago, we all expected and feared that he would fall back into his old ways.  She feared it herself, and the thought gave a terror to death, for she was like a guardian angel to that man, and lived only for the one purpose.  By the way, did you see a black japanned box in his room?”

“Yes.”

“I fancy it contains her letters.  If ever he has occasion to be away, if only for a single night, he invariably takes his black japanned box with him.  Well, well, Colmore, perhaps I have told you rather more than I should, but I shall expect you to reciprocate if anything of interest should come to your knowledge.”

I could see that the worthy man was consumed with curiosity and just a little piqued that I, the newcomer, should have been the first to penetrate into the untrodden chamber.  But the fact raised me in his esteem, and from that time onwards I found myself upon more confidential terms with him.

And now the silent and majestic figure of my employer became an object of greater interest to me.  I began to understand that strangely human look in his eyes, those deep lines upon his care-worn face.  He was a man who was fighting a ceaseless battle, holding at arm’s length, from morning till night, a horrible adversary who was forever trying to close with him—­an adversary which would destroy him body and soul could it but fix its claws once more upon him.  As I watched the grim, round-backed figure pacing the corridor or walking in the garden, this imminent danger seemed to take bodily shape, and I could almost fancy that I saw this most loathsome and dangerous of all the fiends crouching closely in his very shadow, like a half-cowed beast which slinks beside its keeper, ready at any unguarded moment to spring at his throat.  And the dead woman, the woman who had spent her life in warding off this danger, took shape also to my imagination, and I saw her as a shadowy but beautiful presence which intervened for ever with arms uplifted to screen the man whom she loved.