CAI RENOUNCES.
If this thing had happened--?
After Fancy left him Cai dropped into his armchair, and sat for a long while staring at the paper ornament with which Mrs Bowldler had decorated his summer hearth. It consisted of a cascade of paper shavings with a frontage of paper roses and tinsel foliage, and was remarkable not only for its own sake but because Mrs Bowldler had chosen to display the roses upside down. But though Cai stared at it hard, he observed it not.
For some minutes his mind refused to work beyond the catastrophe. "If it had happened--if 'Bias had indeed lost all his money. . . ."
He arose, lit a pipe, and dropped back into his chair.
It may be that the tobacco clarified his brain. . . . Of a sudden the child's words recurred and wrote themselves upon it, and stood
