Sam watched him out of sight down the stairs, then turned and made his way back to the inner office. Billie was sitting limply on the chair which Jno. Peters had occupied. She sprang to her feet.
“Has he really gone?”
“Yes. He’s gone this time.”
“Was he—was he violent?”
“A little,” said Sam. “A little. But I calmed him down.” He looked at her gravely. “Thank God I was in time!”
“Oh, you are the bravest man in the world!” cried Billie, and, burying her face in her hands, burst into tears.
“There, there!” said Sam. “There, there! Come, come! It’s all right now! There, there, there!”
He knelt down beside her. He slipped one arm round her waist. He patted her hands.
“There, there, there!” he said.
I have tried to draw Samuel Marlowe so that he will live on the printed page. I have endeavoured to delineate his character so that it will be as an open book. And, if I have succeeded in my task, the reader will by now have become aware that he was a young man with the gall of an Army mule. His conscience, if he had ever had one, had become atrophied through long disuse. He had given this sensitive girl the worst fright she had had since a mouse had got into her bedroom at school. He had caused Jno. Peters to totter off to the Rupert Street range making low, bleating noises. And did he care? No! All he cared about was the fact that he had erased for ever from Billie’s mind that undignified picture of himself as he had appeared on the boat, and substituted another which showed him brave, resourceful, gallant. All he cared about was the fact that Billie, so cold ten minutes before, had just allowed him to kiss her for the forty-second time. If you had asked him, he would have said that he had acted for the best, and that out of evil cometh good, or some sickening thing like that. That was the sort of man Samuel Marlowe was.