The Seraph bowed and rode away without answering. Physically as well as metaphorically he was thin-skinned, and the switch had drawn blood. Three weeks passed before his face lost the last trace of Sylvia's castigation. A purple wale first blackened and then turned yellowish green. When I saw him later in the day, his face was swollen, and the mark stretched diagonally from cheekbone to chin, crossing and cutting the lips on its way. He gave me the story quietly and without rancour.
"I can't go again after this," he concluded, "but somebody ought to. If you've got any influence with her, use it, and use it quickly. She doesn't know—you none of you know—the danger she's in at present!"
He jumped up to pace the room in uncontrollable nervous excitement.
"What's going to happen, Seraph?" I asked, in a voice that was intended to be sympathetic, sceptical, and pacifying at one and the same moment.
"I don't know—but she's in danger—I know that—I know that—I'm certain of that—I know that."
His overstrung nerves betrayed themselves in a dozen different ways. It occurred to me that the less time he spent alone in his own society the better.
"I'll see if I can do anything," I said in off-hand fashion. "Meantime, I dropped in to know if your invitation held good for a bed under your hospitable roof-tree."
"Delighted to have you," he answered; and then less conventionally, "it's very kindly intended."
"Kindness all on your side," I murmured, pretending not to see that he had plumbed the reason for my coming.
The old, absent thought-reading look returned for an instant to his eyes.