Loder returned his questioning gaze; but almost immediately he turned aside.  “I?” he said.  “Oh, I shall leave London.”

XXVII

But Loder did not leave London.  And the hour of two on the day following his dismissal of Chilcote found him again in his sitting-room.

He sat at the centre-table surrounded by a cloud of smoke; a pipe was between his lips and the morning’s newspapers lay in a heap beside his elbow.  To the student of humanity his attitude was intensely interesting.  It was the attitude of a man trammelled by the knowledge of his strength.  Before him, as he sat smoking, stretched a future of absolute nothingness; and towards this blank future one portion of his consciousness —­a struggling and as yet scarcely sentient portion—­pushed him inevitably; while another—­a vigorous, persistent, human portion—­cried to him to pause.  So actual, so clamorous was this silent mental combat that had raged unceasingly since the moment of his renunciation that at last in physical response to it he pushed back his chair.

“It’s too late!” he said, aloud.  “I’m a fool.  It’s too late!”

Then abruptly, astonishingly, as though in direct response to his spoken thought, the door opened and Chilcote walked into the room.

Slowly Loder rose and stared at him.  The feeling he acknowledged to himself was anger; but below the anger a very different sensation ran riotously strong.

And it was in time to this second feeling, this sudden, lawless joy, that his pulses beat as he turned a cold face on the intruder.

“Well?” he said, sternly.

But Chilcote was impervious to sternness.  He was mentally shaken and distressed, though outwardly irreproachable, even to the violets in the lapel of his coat—­the violets that for a week past had been brought each morning to the door of Loder’s rooms by Eve’s maid.  For one second, as Loder’s eyes’ rested on the flowers, a sting of ungovernable jealousy shot through him; then as suddenly it died away, superseded by another feeling—­a feeling of new, spontaneous joy.  Worn by Chilcote or by himself, the flowers were a symbol!

“Well?” he said again, in a gentler voice.

Chilcote had walked to the table and laid down his hat.  His face was white and the muscles of his lips twitched nervously as he drew off his gloves.

“Thank Heaven, you’re here!” he said, shortly.  “Give me something to drink.”

In silence Loder brought out the whiskey and set it on the table; then instinctively he turned aside.  As plainly as though he saw the action, he mentally figured Chilcote’s furtive glance, the furtive movement of his fingers to his waistcoat-pocket, the hasty dropping of the tabloids into the glass.  For an instant the sense of his tacit connivance came to him sharply; the next, he flung it from him.  The human, inner voice was whispering its old watchword.  The strong man has no time to waste over his weaker brother!