“I could not express my sympathy with you,” he said.  “I did not even know that it would be welcome, and I could not interfere without your husband’s consent.  I was bound by a promise.  But—­” he smiled faintly—­“I told him clearly that if you came to me I should not keep that promise.  I should regard it as my release.”

“What have you to tell me?” Avery asked.

“Just this,” he said.  “It isn’t a very long story, but I don’t think you have heard it before.  It’s just the story of one of the worst bits of bad luck that ever befell a man.  He was only a lad of nineteen, and he went out into the world with all his life before him.  He was rich and successful in every way, full of promise, brilliant.  There was something so splendid about him that he seemed somehow to belong to a higher planet.  He had never known failure or disgrace.  But one night an evil fate befell him.  He was forced to fight—­against his will; and—­he killed his man.  It was an absolutely unforeseen result.  He took heavy odds, and naturally he matched them with all the skill at his command.  But it was a fair fight.  I testify to that.  He took no mean advantage.”

Crowther’s eyes were gazing beyond Avery.  He spoke with a curious deliberation as if he were describing a vision that hung before him.

“He himself was more shocked by the man’s death than anyone I have ever seen.  He accepted the responsibility at once.  There is a lot of nobility at the back of that man’s soul.  He wanted to give himself up.  But I stepped in.  I took the law into my own hands.  I couldn’t stand by and see him ruined.  I made him bolt.  He went, and I saw no more of him for six years.  That ends the first chapter of the story.”

He paused, as if for question or comment; but Avery sat in unbroken silence.  Her eyes also were fixed as it were upon something very far away.

After a moment, he resumed.  “Six years after, I stopped at Monte Carlo on my way home, and I chanced upon him there.  He was with his old grandfather, living a life that would have driven most young men crazy with boredom.  But—­I told you there was something fine about him—­he treated the whole thing as a joke, and I saw that he was the apple of the old man’s eye.  He hailed me as an old friend.  He welcomed me back into his life as if I were only associated with pleasant things.  But I soon saw that he was not happy.  The memory of that tragedy was hanging on him like a millstone.  He was trying to drag himself free.  But he was like a dog on a chain.  He could see his liberty, but he could not reach it.  And the fact that he loved a woman, and believed that he had won her love made the burden even heavier.  So I gathered, though he had his intervals of reckless happiness when nothing seemed to matter.  I didn’t know who the woman was at first, but I urged him strongly to tell her the truth before he married her.  And then somehow, while we were walking together one night, it came out—­that trick of Fate; and in his horror and despair the boy very nearly went under altogether.  It was just the fineness of his nature that kept him up.”