180 The Light That Failed I’m not looking. What am I to do?” “Speak to him,” said the Nilghai. “Oh yes! Write to her, — I don’t know her full name, remember, — and ask her to accept him out of pity. I believe you once told Dick you were sorry for him, Nilghai. You remember what happened, eh? Go into the bedroom and suggest full confession and an appeal to this Maisie girl, whoever she is. I honestly believe he’d try to kill you; and the blindness has made him rather muscular.” “Torpenhow’s course is perfectly clear,” said the Keneu. “He will go to Vitry-sur-Marne, which is on the Bezieres-Landes Railway, — single track from Tourgas. The Prussians shelled it out in 70 because there was a poplar on the top ofa hill eighteen hundred yards from the church spire There’s a squadron of cavalry quartered there, — or ought to be. Where this studio Torp spoke about may be I cannot tell. That is Torp’s business. I have given him his route. He will dispassionately explain the situation to the girl, and she will come back to Dick, — the more especially because, to use Dick’s words, ‘there is nothing but her damned obstinacy to keep them apart.” “And they have four hundred and twenty pounds a year between ’em. Dick never lost his head for figures, even in his delirium. You haven’t the shadow of an excuse for not going,” said the Nilghai. Torpenhow looked very uncomfortable. “But it’s absurd and impossible. I can’t drag her back by the fairs “Our business — the business for which we draw our money — 1s to do absurd and impossible things, — generally with no reason whatever except to amuse the public. Here we have a reason. The rest doesn’t matter. I shall share these rooms with the Nilghai till Torpenhow returns. There will be a batch of unbridled ‘spe