She came to the door of the flat herself.  She had a funny little gray shawl about her shoulders and a pen in her hand.  She tried to make her voice sound very cordial as she greeted him, but he thought he caught something that sounded as if, while perfectly well disposed to him, she couldn’t for the life of her imagine why he had come.

“Come in,” she said, “though I’m afraid it’s a little cold in here.  Our janitor—­”

“Let me light your fire for you,” he answered, and extracting a parlor-match from his pocket,—­safety-matches were his bugbear,—­he stooped, and put the flame to the fire.  As he did so he understood that it was not the mere forgetfulness of a servant that had left it unlighted, but probably a deliberate economy, and he rose crimson and unhappy.

It took him some time to recover, and during the entire time she sat in her gray shawl, looking very amiable, but plainly unable to think of anything to say.

“I saw your son in Farron’s office to-day.”

“Mr. Farron has been so kind, so wonderfully kind!”

Only a guilty conscience could have found reproach in this statement, and Lanley said: 

“And I hear he is dining at my daughter’s this evening.”

Mrs. Wayne had had a telephone message to that effect.

“I wondered, if you were alone—­” Lanley hesitated.  He had of course been going to ask her to come and dine with him, but a better inspiration came to him.  “I wondered if you would ask me to dine with you.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Mrs. Wayne, “but I can’t.  I have a boy coming.  He’s studying for the ministry, the most interesting person.  He had not been sober for three years when I took hold of him, and now he hasn’t touched a drop for two.”

He sighed.  She said she was sorry, but he could see plainly enough that any reformed, or even more any unreformed, drunkard would always far surpass him in ability to command her interest.  He did not belong to a generation that cleared things up with words; he would have thought it impertinent, almost ungentlemanly, to probe her attitude of mind about the scene at Adelaide’s; and he would have considered himself unmanly to make any plea to her on the ground of his own suffering.  One simply supported such things as best one could; it was expected of one, like tipping waiters.  He had neither the vocabulary nor the habit of mind that made an impersonal exposition of an emotional difficulty possible; but even had he possessed these powers he would have retained his tradition against using them.  Perhaps, if she had been his sister or his wife, he might have admitted that he had had a hard day or that every one had moments of depression; but that was not the way to talk in a lady’s drawing-room.  In the silence he saw her eyes steal longingly to her writing-table, deeply and hopelessly littered with papers and open books.

“I’m afraid I’m detaining you,” he said.  The visit had been a failure.