"You said that, Atkins?"

His face was so drawn and unnatural that Atkins looked at him in surprise.

"I suppose I was right?"

"If Hartley wants to see me," said Heath, in a loud, angry voice, "or if he wants to come bullying and blustering, he must write and make an appointment. I have every right to protect myself from a man who asks personal and most impertinent questions."

"Hartley, impertinent?" Atkins' eyes grew round.

"When I say impertinent, I mean not pertinent, or bearing upon any subject that I intend to discuss with him."

The Rev. Francis Heath got up and walked towards the window, turning his back upon the room.

"I don't mix in social politics," said Atkins, soothingly. "But at the same time, I can't understand you, Heath. What the devil does Hartley want to know?"

The clergyman caught at the curtain and gripped it as he had gripped the back of his chair at the Club.

"Never ask me that again, Atkins," he said, in a low, hoarse voice. "Never speak to me about this again."

Atkins retreated quickly from the room; there was something in the manner of the Rev. Francis Heath that he did not like, and he registered a mental vow to let the subject drop, so far as he, a lieutenant in His Majesty's Royal Engineers, was concerned, and never to allude to it, either for "fear or favour," again.
IV

INTRODUCES THE READER TO MRS. WILDER IN A SECRETIVE MOOD

Draycott Wilder was a man who hoarded his passions and concentrated them upon a very few objects. His work came first, and his intense ambition, and after his work, his wife. She was the right sort of wife for a man who put worldly success first, and through the years of their marriage had helped him a great deal more than he ever admitted. Clarice Wilder was beautiful, and had a surface cleverness combined with a natural gift of tact that made her an admirable hostess. She could talk to anybody and send them away pleased and satisfied with themselves, and she had made the best of Draycott for a good number of years. She had married him when marriage seemed a big thing and a wonderful thing, and her country home in Devonshire a small, breathless place where nothing ever happened, and where life was one long 

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