“And you propose to wait for it?”

“Yes, I do.”  Jack paused an instant; then, “You must wait too,” he said doggedly.  “She isn’t very likely to want you, and I’ve sworn you shan’t frighten her any more; but you shan’t abandon her either while there is the faintest chance that she may want you.”

“There is not the faintest.”  Mordaunt glanced down at the thing that had once been a cigarette which he still held between his fingers, contemplated it for a moment, then rose and went to the mantelpiece for an ash-tray.  “You have taken a good deal upon yourself, Jack,” he said.  “But I have borne with you because I know that your position is a difficult one.  You say you know everything.  That may be so, and again it may not.  In either case, our points of view do not coincide.  I will wait until that telegram comes; but it is not my intention to go to my wife—­whatever it may contain.”

Jack bit his lip savagely.  “In short, you don’t care what happens to her!” he said.  “You want to be rid of her—­one way or another.  And you don’t care how!”

He spoke recklessly, uttering the thought that had come uppermost in his mind without an instant’s consideration.  Perhaps instinctively he sought to rouse the devil that till then had been held in such rigid control.  But the effect of his words was such as he had scarcely looked for.

Mordaunt turned with the movement of a goaded creature and gripped him by the shoulder.  “You believe that?” he said.

They stood face to face.  Mordaunt was as white as death.  His eyes in that moment were terrible.  But it seemed to Jack that they expressed more of anguish than of anger, and he felt as if he had seen a soul in torment.  He averted his own instinctively.  It was a sight upon which he could not look.

“Do you believe it?” Mordaunt said, his voice very low.

“No!” Impulsively Jack made answer.  That instant’s revelation had quenched his own fire very effectually.  “Forgive me!” he said.  “I—­didn’t understand.”

The hand on his shoulder relaxed slowly.  There fell a silence.  Then, “All right, Jack,” Mordaunt said very quietly.

And Jack knew that he had dropped the veil again that shrouded his soul’s agony.

“You will wait here for that telegram?” Mordaunt asked, after a moment.

“Yes, please.”

“Will you come into the other room?  Rupert is with me.”

“No.  I’ll wait here, thanks.”

“Very well.  I shall see you again.”  Mordaunt crossed to the door, then paused, and after a moment came slowly back to the table.

He stood before it in silence, looking down upon the portrait that Jack had laid there as one looks upon the face of the dead.

His face showed no sign of softening, yet Jack made a last effort to move him.  “You’re not going to let her fret her heart out for you?  You’ll go back to her if she is wanting you?  Damn it, Trevor!  You can’t know what she is suffering!  And after all—­she is your wife!”