"It's not been easy," he exclaimed. "I'm sure something happened—something went wrong."
"Something nearly went wrong—VERY nearly," answered Marco. But as he spoke he took the sketch of the Chancellor out of the slit in his sleeve and tore it and burned it with a match. "But I did get near enough. And that's TWO."
They talked long, before they went to sleep that night. The Rat grew pale as he listened to the story of the woman in violet.
"I ought to have gone with you!" he said. "I see now. An aide-de-camp must always be in attendance. It would have been harder for her to manage two than one. I must always be near to watch, even if I am not close by you. If you had not come back—if you had not come back!" He struck his clenched hands together fiercely. "What should I have done!"
When Marco turned toward him from the table near which he was standing, he looked like his father.
"You would have gone on with the Game just as far as you could," he said. "You could not leave it. You remember the places, and the faces, and the Sign. There is some money; and when it was all gone, you could have begged, as we used to pretend we should. We have not had to do it yet; and it was best to save it for country places and villages. But you could have done it if you were obliged to. The Game would have to go on."
The Rat caught at his thin chest as if he had been struck breathless.
"Without you?" he gasped. "Without you?"
"Yes," said Marco. "And we must think of it, and plan in case anything like that should happen."
He stopped himself quite suddenly, and sat down, looking straight before him, as if at some far away thing he saw.