“And yet,” said Langholm—­they were not quite his next words—­“and yet you challenged me to discover the truth!  I still can’t understand your attitude that night!”

Steel stood silent.

“Some day I may explain it to you,” he said.  “I am only now going to explain it to my wife.”

The men shook hands.

And Langholm rode on his bicycle off the scene of the one real melodrama of a life spent in inventing fictitious ones; and if you ask what he had to show for his part in it, you may get your answer one day from his work.  Not from the masterpiece which he used to talk over with Mrs. Steel, for it will never be written; not from any particular novel or story, much less in the reproduction of any of these incidents, wherein he himself played so dubious a part; but perhaps you will find your answer in a deeper knowledge of the human heart, a stronger grasp of the realities of life, a keener sympathy with men and (particularly) with women, than formerly distinguished this writer’s books.  These, at all events, are some of the things which Charles Langholm has to show, if he will only show them.  And in the meantime you are requested not to pity him.

Steel went straight to his wife.  Tears were still in her eyes, but such tears, and such eyes!  It cost him an effort to say what he had to say, and that was unusual in his case.

“Rachel,” he said at length, in a tone as new as his reluctance, “I am going to answer the question which you have so often asked me.  I am going to answer it with perfect honesty, and very possibly you will never speak to me again.  I shall be sorry for both our sakes if you do anything precipitate, but in any case you shall act as you think best.  You know that I was exceedingly fond of Alec Minchin as a young man; now, I am not often exceedingly fond of anybody, as you may also know by this time.  Before your trial I was convinced that you had killed my old friend, whom I was so keen to see again that I came up to town by the very first train after getting his letter.  You had robbed me of the only friend I had in England at the very moment when he needed me and I was on my way to him.  I could have saved his ship, and you had sent both him and it to the bottom!  That, I say candidly, was what I thought.”

“I don’t blame you for thinking it before the trial,” said Rachel.  “It seems to have been the universal opinion.”

“I formed mine for myself, and I had a particular reason for forming it,” continued Steel, with a marked vibration in his usually unemotional voice.  “I don’t know which to tell you first....  Well, it shall be that reason.  On the night of the murder do you remember coming downstairs and going or rather looking into the study—­at one o’clock in the morning?”

Rachel recoiled in her chair.

“Heavens!” she cried.  “How can you know that?”

“Did you hear nothing as you went upstairs again?”