His tones were low and tight with the infinity of pain that underlay the next verses: Valdez recalling his old adventure days, when unknown, unfettered, he sailed in happy comradeship on the South Seas:

And a faint mockery twitched the young man’s lips, as if drawing some secret analogy with the curse of good fortune following the Spaniard’s every movement.

Baldwin flicked a fine powder of chalk from his coat-sleeve, and fixed Stuart with the super-concentrated glare of one whose attention has wandered. It was difficult to tell what was the effect of the poem on the other two men, standing with faces in deepest shadow, well above the zone of illumination.

By a curious power he possessed of projection into the future, Stuart was able to glimpse himself, victim of a self-made great career, striving passionately to escape its easeful heaviness; regain the careless freedom, the stimulating longings of non-achievement. And he saw, too, with unerring clarity, how, step by step, he, even he, another Diego Valdez, might be spurred by inspiring eloquence, noble example, to such inevitable bondage.

Baldwin thought, relieved, that the ensuing pause marked the signal for opinions to be delivered:

“I must say, I don’t see that the fellow, Diego What’s-his-name, had much to grumble at.”

Stuart looked towards Derwent, who said, rather elaborately:

“It seems to me, my dear boy, that I detect an inconsistency, if I may be permitted to make the remark. With one breath you assure us that you desire to fight your battles without assistance to detract from the joy of victory; while in the verses you so—er—ah, yes, so effectively repeated, I take it that you were voicing a distaste for the responsibilities of high office consequent on victory?”

“It does sound as if there were a flaw,” Stuart admitted, overjoyed at having evoked a point sufficiently strong to put him on the defensive: “You might reconcile it this way, Khalif: I want to do; I don’t want to become.”

Derwent enquired: “Then what are your plans? It strikes me as somewhat preposterous that you should be let work out your destiny from the very bottom of the ladder, like so many millions who have no alternative.”

“It wouldn’t do, either.” Stuart sprang from the table; and hands plunged deep in his pockets, head bent, paced moodily the length of the room. “Without the actual necessity, that would simply label me as a freak: the eccentric young millionaire who elects to work with the masses. However far I wrenched myself from your powerful wealth and influence, the mere fact of it would still prevent my struggles from being genuine. They’d be theatrical, neither more nor less. I’m damnably placed, Khalif,—and I want to be a Commissioner of Oaths!”

This last for Baldwin’s benefit, remarking with concern that his youngest uncle’s immaculately trousered leg had remained for a full twenty minutes unpulled.

“A—what?” Baldwin responded instantly. “Really, Stuart!”

“I’ve never been told the exact duties of a Commissioner of Oaths, but the title is alluring in its possibilities, in the red robust rakish twang of it. Think of being forever surrounded by an atmosphere of oaths; thundering oaths, villainous oaths, subtle sanguinary oaths,” Stuart raised eyes of sky-exalted innocence to meet Baldwin’s uneasy glare. “Hellish oaths,” he finished, gently as a child.

“Really, Stuart——” Mr. Carr had much to do to remember his allegiance. And Derwent Heron, noting signs of disturbance, hastily broke in with the subject of his meditations, before it was as ripe as he could have wished it.

“If you will permit me,” without which preamble he rarely opened speech, “I have a suggestion to offer; one which I never before submitted to you, my boy, as I assumed you were set on gaining laurels in some profession. Your many triumphs at Oxford accounting for this mistake on my part. Since it is not to be, how do you view the idea of a partnership in the business?” Impressive pause. And then the old man resumed in faintly ironic voice: “It would give you plenty to do, nothing to become,—unless it be Lord Mayor of London. And that evil can be circumvented with a little discretion and a sufficient stinginess on charity lists.”

A flicker of surprised amusement in Stuart’s eyes. “A diamond merchant,” he murmured, ... “why not? Khalif, Vizier and One-eyed Calendar—and now behold Camaralzaman! A bit fantastic, that’s all there is against it.”

Derwent heard. “If I may venture to prognosticate, you won’t find much that is fantastic about the offices in Holborn. However, you needn’t decide all at once; think the matter over. I need hardly say,” with a glance that gathered in his partners, “that your father’s son will be more than welcome; though I, for one, am disappointed, yes, certainly disappointed, that you have renounced burdens of a more glorious nature.”

“After all,” quoth Baldwin, “if we all shirked responsibility in that fashion, where would the world be?”

To which Arthur Heron, speaking for the first time: “To every Admiral his Spain. Baldwin’s thinking of the regatta season.”

“Uncle Arthur,” Stuart cried exuberantly, “your scalp at least is mine, to nail at my belt!” with which expression of gratitude to the sole convert of his evening’s eloquence, he crashed asunder the doors, and made an effective exit.

Baldwin was thinking of this scene, in the silence following his vain effort to turn Stuart from a discipleship of Nietzsche. From recognition of the fact that, in spite of philosophy, his nephew had not, after all, made such a bad diamond merchant, he suddenly remembered the object of his visit that evening:

“Look here, Stuart, what do you think of this Antoine Gobert business?”

“I think Antoine Gobert is a clever fraud.”

“Sir Fergus Macpherson seems inclined to believe there may be something in it.”

“What—that this fellow can actually manufacture diamonds indistinguishable from the real stone?”

“He thinks there may be something in it.”

“A Scotchman has no right to believe in miracles,” said Stuart carelessly; but a hard line had crept between his eyes; he had been buying stock heavily of late; and if this upstart foreigner should prove after all to be genuine in his avowals—

“Derwent spoke to Grey, and to Rupert Rosenstein. There