Malakite at Weymouth.” No! He would have supper with Christie; but he would keep his integrity. At eleven o’clock he would go back to Gerda. The idea of this eleven o’clock seemed like a penitential offering, heavy to lift, which, by a superhuman effort, he would offer up to his Deus Absconditus. But even now, as he heard Olwen’s light steps and bursts of laughter in the room above, the thought of the two-hundred dragged his resolution down. He couldn’t give up the relief of flinging this cheque into his mother’s lap; and by some intricate psychic law it seemed useless to renounce Christie’s bed and yet accept Urquhart’s money!

Jason’s voice interrupted his meditations. But it was not of poetry he spoke. “Tell me, Solent,” he said, “would you prophesy from what you know of me that I would outlive you by ten years?”

“Not ten, Jason!”