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244 not come before, Mr. Prodmore, it was—very frankly speaking—from the dread of seeing you!" His speech contradicted, to some extent, his gesture, but Clement Yule's was an aspect in which contradictions were rather remarkably at home. Erect and slender, but as strong as he was straight, he was set up, as the phrase is, like a soldier, and yet finished, in certain details—matters of expression and suggestion only indeed—like a man in whom sensibility had been recklessly cultivated. He was hard and fine, just as he was sharp and gentle, just as he was frank and shy, just as he was serious and young, just as he looked, though you could never have imitated it, distinctly "kept up" and yet considerably reduced. His features were thoroughly regular, but his complete shaving might have been designed to show that they were, after all, not absurd. The face Mr. Prodmore offered him fairly glowed, on this new showing, with instant pride of possession, and there was that in Captain Yule's whole air which justified such a sentiment without consciously rewarding it.

"Ah, surely," said the elder man, "my presence is not without a motive!"

"It's just the motive," Captain Yule returned,