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268 dree's kisses. But he would not forego those kisses. Almost he felt that he could not. He did not blind himself here. He had deliberately slacked in himself the forces which would have fought for him against temptation, and now he had to suffer for it. And he did suffer. He had been so eager to do what seemed to him one of the real unselfish things of his life, for he had known that he might lose Tempest's friendship through it. He had known that Jennifer might hear garbled tales.

Well, he would lose Tempest's friendship—when Tempest found out. And Jennifer might hear tales—and he could not deny them. He smiled in that bitter humour which seldom forsook him. He had tried to play the honest man; the unselfish friend. In his hands it had turned to this already, and what it might turn to in the future he did not care to think. But, as had happened to him so many times in his life, he had seen the good all the way through, and had done the wrong.

Poley came in clattering with the lamp and the tray, and Dick got up and went to his room. Kennedy was there, writing a letter with stiff, cold fingers. He looked up with his ruddy boyish face perplexed.

"How do you spell niece?" he asked.

Dick gave the information. Then he looked at the lad. Kennedy was such a frank-hearted, honest fellow, and he hoped that none of the hottest fires of life would ever sear him.

"Whose niece is she, Kennedy?" he asked. But Kennedy's brow was calm.

"My own," he said. "I've got a married sister. I sent the kiddie a Christmas present from her Uncle Jack. My, I just know how her eyes'll stick out when she gets it."

Dick left him chewing his pen-handle and chuckling, and ran down again. From his own room Tempest heard him pass along the passage, and he halted a moment in the putting on of his riding gear. His eyes were dark with the struggle that had grown more fierce in Dick's presence. He had not won out yet. For all his knowledge, all his training, all his belief, all his strength he had not yet won the staying point. Because the staying point needs such infinitely deeper anchorage than the arriving point,