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had enough of that particular form of folly to last me my life. . . . I don’t choose to give men of Gasparri’s stamp the right to call me ugly names. ‘The incident is clo—osed.’ . . . What shall I say to Alison? There’s little enough one can say. . . . Perhaps it was wise of her not to see me. I know Paolo thought so, and I suppose I am better out of the country; but it looks uncommonly like leaving her in the lurch. . . . But how could I help writing to ask. I didn’t know how she stood—but he says it’s all right. . . What on earth am I going to say to Alison?”

It was a very short letter that he sent her in the end, one that gave no details of any kind. It merely said he was sorry he had not written for so long, and for several other things, which should not occur again.

“I don’t seem to be paying for my sins, I hardly know myself,” he wrote. “In the old days I always paid so promptly that the conviction of sin (is that what the Calvinists call it?) had no time to sink in. But now I have come off scot-free and rather puzzled. . . . Good night. Love from Tony.”

He felt better after that, though he could not conscientiously call it a confession; and as he went along the Italian Riviera the events of that last month began, not to fade, but to recede very rapidly. Presently they did not weigh on him at all.

He was not twenty-two yet; he was remarkably fit, charged with energy to the finger-tips, and full of the Pride of Life. He turned to Spain, and presently began to enjoy himself in a new way.

It was the ancient and honourable game of smuggling in which he now took a hand, finding a keener enjoyment in it than in any form of sport he had hitherto tried. An old acquaintance at Biarritz let him into it first, at his cautious request. An excellent game! Tony did not tire of it. In Spain it has great variety, and the piquancy