She must say something, no matter what, and the words that came were: 
“Won’t you have another cup of tea?”

He shook his head, still without looking up.  “Thanks; no.”

But she was back again on her own ground, back from the land of enchantment and anguish.  It was like returning to an empty home after a journey of poignant romance.  She was mistress of herself again, mistress of her secret and her loneliness.  She could command her voice, too.  She could hear herself saying, as if some one else were speaking from the other side of the room: 

“It seems to me you take it too tragically to begin with—­”

“It isn’t to begin with.  I saw there was a screw loose from the first.  And since then some one has told me that she was—­half in love with him, by Jove!—­as it was.”

She remained standing beside the tea-table.  “That must have been Cousin Henry.  He’d have a motive in thinking so—­not so much to deceive you as to deceive himself.  But if it’s any comfort to you to know it, I’ve talked to them both.  I suppose they spoke to me confidentially, and I haven’t felt justified in betraying them.  But rather than see you suffer—­”

He put the poker in its place among the fire-irons and swung round in his chair toward her.  “Oh, I say!  It isn’t suffering, you know.  That is, it isn’t—­”

She smiled feebly.  “Oh, I know what it is.  You don’t have to explain.  But I’ll tell you.  I asked Peter—­or practically asked him—­some time ago—­if he was in love with her—­and he said he wasn’t.”

His face brightened.  “Did he, by Jove?”

“And when I told her that—­the other day—­she said—­”

“Yes?  Yes?  She said—?”

“She didn’t put it in so many words—­but she gave me to understand—­or tried to give me to understand—­that it was a relief to her—­because, in that case, she wasn’t obliged to have him on her mind.  A woman has those things on her mind, you know, about one man when she loves another.”

He jumped up.  “I say!  You’re a good pal.  I shall never forget it.”

He came toward her, but she stepped back at his approach.  She was more sure of herself in the shadow.

“Oh, it’s nothing—­”

“You see,” he tried to explain, “it’s this way with me.  I’ve made it a rule in my life to do—­well, a little more than the right thing—­to do the high thing, if you understand—­and that fellow has a way of getting so damnably on top.  I can’t allow it, you know.  I told you so the other day.”

“You mean, if he does something fine, you must do something finer.”

He winced at this.  “I can’t go on swallowing his beastly favors, don’t you see?  And hang it all! if he is—­if he is my—­my rival—­he must have a show.”

“And how are you going to give him a show if he won’t take it?”

He started to pace up and down the room.  “That’s your beastly America, where everything goes by freaks—­where everything is queer and inconsequent and tortuous, and you can’t pin any one down.”