“You’ve known him twenty years then.  And you have known me—­three?”

“Four, Molly—­four next September.”

“Well, four then.  It isn’t a long time.  And you see it wasn’t enough, to know me in, was it?”

He said nothing; but the fringe dropped from his fingers.

“You were Nevill’s best friend too, weren’t you?”

“Yes.  His best friend, and his worst, God help me!”

“I suppose that means you’ve quarreled with him?  I thought I heard you.  But, of course, you didn’t know.”

“Forgive me, I did not.”  He had misunderstood her—­again!

“Well, you know now.  I wasn’t worth quarreling about, was I?”

He got up and leaned out of the window, looking into the dull street that roared seventy feet below.  Then he sighed; and whether it was a sigh of relief or pain he could not tell.

Neither did Mrs. Nevill Tyson in her great wisdom know.

CHAPTER XIX

CONFESSIONAL

After all, Tyson was the first to make up the quarrel.  If a sense of justice was wanting in him it was supplied by a sense of humor, and he was very soon conscious of something ridiculous in his attitude towards Stanistreet.  He had law and nature on his side for once, but in the eyes of the humorist, or of impartial justice, there was not very much to choose between them.  In fact the advantage was on Stanistreet’s side.  He, Tyson, had thrown his wife and Stanistreet together from the first, he had exposed her to what, in his view, would have been sharp temptation to nine women out of ten, and she had not wronged him by a single thought.  As for Stanistreet, he had not taken, or even attempted to take, the chance he gave him.

His tolerance showed how far he had separated himself from her.  A month ago he would not have thought so lightly of the matter.

One evening, not long after their stormy interview, he turned up at Stanistreet’s rooms in Chelsea, much as he had turned up at Ridgmount Gardens after his year’s absence.

Stanistreet was lying back in a low chair, smoking and thinking.  The change in Louis’s appearance was still more striking than when they had last met.  His clothes hung loosely, on him; his whole figure had a drooping, disjointed look.  But the restless light had gone from his eyes; the muscles of his lean face were set in a curious repose, as if the man’s nature were appeased, as if his will had somehow resisted the physical collapse.  He rose reluctantly as Tyson came in, and stood, manifestly ill at ease, while Tyson, ignoring the interrogation of his air, took possession of a seat which was not offered to him.

“Look here, Stanistreet,” said he, “I can’t stand this any longer.  You and I can’t afford to quarrel—­about a woman.  It’s not worth it.”

“That is precisely what your wife said.  But it’s not the way I should put it myself.  We did quarrel; and you at least had every provocation.”