“I would have behaved like a damned scoundrel, if you like.  But I wouldn’t have left her.  Not even to marry and live morally ever after.  I can be faithful—­to another man’s wife.”

The twinkle went out like a spark, and Tyson looked at his hearth.  It was dangerous to irritate Stanistreet, for there was no end to the things he knew.  So he only said, “Do you mind not shouting quite so loud.  She’s in there—­she may hear you.”

She had heard him; she was calling to Nevill.  He went to her, leaving the door of communication unlatched.

“Is that Louis?” she asked.  Tyson muttered something which Stanistreet could not hear, and Molly answered with an intense pleading note that carried far.  “But I must see him.”

He started forward at the sound of her voice.  I believe up to the very last he clung to the doubt that was his hope.  But Tyson had heard the movement and he shut the door.

The pleading and muttering went on again on the other side.  Heaven only knew what incriminating things the little fool was saying in there!  As Stanistreet waited, walking up and down the empty room, he noticed for the first time that it was empty.  Only the other day it had been crammed with things that were symbols or monuments of the foolishness of Mrs. Nevill Tyson.  Now ceiling and walls were foul with smoke, the gay white paint was branded and blistered, and the floor he walked on was cleared as if for a dance of devils.  But it was nothing to Stanistreet.  It would have been nothing to him if he had found Mrs. Nevill Tyson’s drawing-room utterly consumed.  There was no reality for him but his own lust, and anger, and bitterness, and his idea of Mrs. Nevill Tyson.

Presently Tyson came back.

“You can go in,” he said, “but keep quiet, for God’s sake!”

Stanistreet went in.

Tyson looked back; he saw him stop half-way from the threshold.

It was only for a second, but to Stanistreet it seemed eternity.  From all eternity Mrs. Nevill Tyson had been lying there on that couch, against those scarlet cushions, with the blinds up and the sun shining full on her small, scarred face, and on her shrunken, tortured throat.

She held out her hand and said, “I thought it was you.  I wanted to see you.  Can you find a chair?”

He murmured something absolutely trivial and sat down by her couch, playing with the fringe of the shawl that covered her.

“Did I hear you say you had been ill?” she asked.

He leant forward, bending his head low over the fringe; she could not see his face.  “I had inflammation of something or other, and I went partially off my head—­got out of bed and walked about in an east wind with a temperature of a hundred and two, decimal point nine.”

“Oh, Louis, how wicked of you!  You might have died!”

“No such luck.”

“For shame!  I’ve been ill too; did you know?  Of course you didn’t, or else you’d have come to ask how I was, wouldn’t you?  No, you wouldn’t.  How could you come when you were ill?”