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308 She did not know that he was afraid to write because the cloud which hung over him would surely have darkened his words, and because he was ashamed to tell what that cloud might be.

He avoided Andree because he feared her, and he avoided Tempest for much the same reason. But his feeing towards Tempest almost deepened into hate very shortly; for Tempest had saved his honour by the very thing which had caused Dick to lose his. Tempest had taken hold of his work again. He had put personal interests from him, and flung himself into the wider, fuller river of the life about him. Labour was his salvation as it has been the salvation of many a man before him, and because his only chance lay in giving his all to it, he gave; lifelessly, sorrowfully, at first, but day by day with strengthening fibres. The very tone of Grey Wolf began to alter. It was known that the Inspector was "watching out," here and there and everywhere else, and men braced up under the flash of his eyes and the lash of his tongue when Tempest went to sweep the refuse of the hidden places out into the sunlight.

He challenged criticism and obvious retort everywhere, but he did not get it. For if he did not spare others neither did he spare himself, and his honesty there did for him what nothing else could have done. But of the real Tempest, the man of the glad ideals and the frank friendships, there seemed nothing left; and Dick knew why. He knew that Tempest could probably have forgiven and forgotten anything but that treachery; and realisation of this haunted him, driving the sin of it home to him past his attempted unconcern and impatient resentment and his cynical knowledge that he was no worse than many another.

Dick had saved Tempest at danger to himself, and that danger grew, embittering him as time went by. Andree alone made his life difficult and unpleasant, for she upbraided and pleaded and coquetted and tormented him whenever occasion arose. Once, catching him in the wood-trail by the lake on a cold evening when the sinking sun left a rose red bank along the indigo-blue clouds she threatened him; and he, being cold and tired and hungry