Saltash got up in his sudden, elastic fashion.  “Look here!  You want a drink.  Sit down while I get you one!”

He was gone with the words, not waiting for the half-uttered remonstrance that the other man sent after him.

Larpent stood staring heavily before him for a space, then turned with a mechanical movement and dropped into a chair.  He was sitting so, bent forward, his hands clasped in front of him when Saltash returned.  He had the worn, grey look of a man tired out with hard travel.

Saltash poured out a drink and held it down to him.  “Here’s the stuff!  Drink, man!  It’ll put new life into you.”

Larpent drank, still in that slow, mechanical fashion.  But as he drained the glass his eyes met Saltash’s alert look and a faint, grim smile crossed his haggard features.

“Don’t let me spoil your holiday, my lord!” he said.

“Don’t be a damn’ fool!” said Saltash.

Larpent sat in silence for several seconds.  Then in a more normal tone he spoke again.  “I had to come to her.  God knows what made her want me after all these years.  But I couldn’t refuse to come.  I had her message two days ago.  She said she was alone—­dying.  So I came.”  He paused and wiped his forehead.  “I thought she had tricked me.  You saw her as she was to-night.  She was like that—­full of life, superb.  But—­I had come to her, and I found I couldn’t leave her.  She wanted me—­she wanted me—­to take her back.”  He got up, but not with any agitation, and began to pace to and fro as though he paced a deck.  “You will think me mad of course.  You never came under the spell.  But I, I was first with her; and perhaps it was fitting that I should be the last.  Had she lived—­after to-night—­I would have taken her away.  She would never have danced again.  I would have taken her out of this damnable world that had dragged her down.  I’d have saved her somehow.”

“You wouldn’t,” said Saltash.  “It’s like a recurrent fever.  You’d never have held her.”

“I say I would.”  Larpent spoke deeply, but still without emotion.  “I could have done it—­and no one else on earth.  I tell you I was first with her, and a woman doesn’t forget the first.  I had a power that no other man ever possessed, or ever could possess.  I was—­her husband.”

“What?” said Saltash.

Larpent paced on with bent head.  “I was her husband.  But I was at sea and she was on shore.  And so I lost her.  She was not made to stand against temptation.  It came to her when I was on the other side of the world.  When I got back, she was gone.  And I—­I never followed her.  The thing was hopeless.  She was that sort, you understand.  It was first one and then another with her.  I dropped her out of my life, and let her go.  I didn’t realize then—­what I know now—­that the power to rescue and to hold her was mine.  If I had, I might have gone after her.  I can’t say.  But I was too bitter at the time to feel it was worth while.  I went back to the sea and left her to work out her own damnation.”