“Why should we quarrel?  What should we gain by doing that?  You and I are two men of the world, to whom human nature is as an open book.  What do you expect me to do?  What do you expect me to say?  What more did you think to call forth from me when you came here this morning?  Do me justice.  Am I not going as far as a man can go when I say that I blot out of my memory the cursed evenings you and I spent together in cursed talk?  That doesn’t cover the ground, you think; but would any other form of words cover it any better?  Would you believe me the more, whatever set of speeches I might adopt?  Would you not always have in the back of your mind your expressive English phrase, that I was lying like a gentleman?  You know best what you can do, as I know best what I can do; but is it not true that we have arrived at a point where the less that is spoken in words on either side, the better it will be for us all?”

When he had finished, Bienville turned again toward the window, leaning his head wearily against the frame.  Derek stood a minute longer watching him.  Then, as if accepting the assertion that there was nothing more that could be said, he went quietly, with bent head, from the room.

* * * * *

He was down in the street before he became fully conscious that, among the confused, strangled cries of pain within him, that which was loudest and most imploring was a wailing self-reproach.  It was a self-reproach with a strain of pleading in it, akin to that with which a mother blames herself for the failings of her son, seizing on any one else’s wrong to palliate the guilt of the accused.  He had injured Diane himself!  He had pried into her past, and laid bare her sins, and stripped her life of that covering of secrecy which no human existence could do without, least of all his own.

He walked on with bowed head, his eyes blind to the May sunshine, his ears deaf to the city’s joyous, energetic uproar, his mind closed to the fact that important business affairs were awaiting his attention.  His feet strayed toward Gramercy Park, directed not so much by volition as by the primary man-instinct to be near some sweet, sympathetic woman in the hour of pain.  Lucilla and he had, grown up in one family as boy and girl together, and there were moments when he found near her the peace he could get nowhere else in the world.

He pushed by the footman who admitted him and walked straight to the room where Lucilla was generally to be found.  Though he could scarcely be surprised to see Diane sitting by her, he stopped on the threshold, with signs of embarrassment, and made as though he would withdraw.  Overwhelmed by the responsibilities of such a moment, Miss Lucilla looked appealingly at Diane, who rose.

“Don’t go, Mr. Pruyn,” she said, forcing herself to show firmness.  “You arrive very opportunely.  I have just asked my mother-in-law to come to my aid in some of the things we discussed last night.  Won’t you do me the justice to hear her?”