John Allard slipped impulsively from the veranda rail and came to sit on the arm of Robert's chair, drawing him into a caressing embrace.
"I know; we've always played together, dear old fellow. School and college, and the short time since,—the two years' difference between us got lost pretty early. But we must learn to go alone at last. And if we undertake this insanity—for it is little better—we must stand without flinching all it brings. Is it worth while? I do not know, but I know many a man has gone into the underworld to protect a woman. How many cashiers have misused funds entrusted to them, how many business men have stooped to illegal methods, in order to give their wives—not necessities, but luxuries? We see it every day, this cowardice for some one loved. Only they do it by degrees, and we do it all at once."
Robert laid his hand over the one on his shoulder.
"It does not sound very pretty," he acknowledged wistfully. "It is the old legend of selling your ego to Mephistopheles. Only, I wouldn't so much mind going to Hades afterward; it is the clasping Mephisto's smudgy fingers that hurts."
"I am not asking you to do it, Bertie. We will just forget this half-hour, if you like. You know it was a suggestion, not a conviction, I voiced. You are right, of course. But I was ready for rebellion against all laws to-day; and then Desmond came to me—"
"Desmond! He is out of prison?"
"A week ago. He came to me for money to go East. 'Do you mind how you and Master Robert used to sneak away from your nurse to play with Tommy, the coachman's boy?' he said to me. 'And now Tommy Desmond is nursed by the police far and near. I am a master at my trade, I am.' He has not changed much since we recognized him at his trial, five years ago, and tried to help him."
Robert turned to see the face above him in the moonlight.
"He said more than that."
"He was very frank," John answered laconically.