But I had pretty well run down before I did start." Waymarsh raised his melancholy look.

"Ain't you about up to your usual average ?" It was not quite pointedly sceptical, but it seemed somehow a plea for the purest veracity, and it thereby affected our friend as the very voice of Milrose.

He had long since made a mental distinction--though never in truth daring to betray it--between the voice of Milrose and the voice even of Woollett.

It was the former he felt, that was most in the real tradition.

There had been occasions in his past when the sound of it had reduced him to temporary confusion, and the present, for some reason, suddenly became such another.