After that his life had been all experiments, most of them failures.  But they served to separate him forever from his place and his people, from all the hateful humiliating past.  He could still say that he owed everything to himself.

Then his uncle’s death gave him the means of realizing his supreme ambition.  By that time he had forgotten that he ever had an uncle.  His family had effaced itself.  Backed by an estate and a good income, there was no reason why its last surviving member should not be a conspicuous social success.  Well, it seemed that he was a conspicuous social failure.

He owed that to Stanistreet, curse him! curse him!  His brain still reeled, and he roused himself with difficulty from his retrospective dream.  When he spoke again it was with the conscious incisiveness of a drunken man trying hard to control his speech.

“Would you mind telling me who you’ve told this story to?  Lady Morley, for one.  My wife,” he raised his voice in his excitement, “my wife, I suppose, for another?”

Stanistreet had every reason for not wanting to quarrel with Tyson.  He liked a country house that he could run down to when he chose; he liked a good mount; he liked a faultless billiard-table; and oddly enough, with all his faults he liked Nevill Tyson.  And he had a stronger motive now.  Consciously or unconsciously he felt that his friendship for Tyson was a safeguard.  A safeguard against—­he hardly knew what.  But the idea of Mrs. Nevill Tyson was like fire to his dry mood.  His brain flared up all in a moment, though his tongue spoke coolly enough.

“I swear I never did anything of the sort.  I haven’t seen your wife for ages—­till to-night.  We don’t correspond.  If we did”—­he stopped suddenly—­“if I did that sort of thing at all Mrs. Tyson is the very last person—­”

“Oblige me by keeping her name out of it.”

Tyson’s voice carried far, through the door and across the passage, penetrating to Pinker in his pantry.

“I didn’t introduce it.”

“All right.  I’m not asking you to lie again.  No doubt everybody knows the facts by this time.  I’m going to turn the lights out.”

Stanistreet pulled himself together with a shrug.  If any other man had hinted to him, in the most graceful and allegorical manner, that he lied, it would have been better for that man if he had not spoken.  But he forgave Tyson many things, and for many reasons, one of these, perhaps, being a certain shamefaced consciousness touching Tyson’s wife.

“By the way,” said he, “are you going to keep this up very much longer?  It’s getting rather monotonous.”

Tyson turned and paused with his hand on the door-knob.  He snarled, showing his teeth like an angry cur, irritated beyond endurance.

“If you mean, am I going to take your word for that—­frankly, I am not.”

He flung the door open and strode out.

Stanistreet followed him.