The brilliant prodigal approached her with a little embarrassed youthful air of humility and charm; the air almost of taking her into his confidence over something unfortunate and absurd.  He had evidently counted on the ten minutes before dinner when he would be left alone with her.  He selected a chair opposite to her, leaning forward in it at ease, his nervousness visible only in the flushed hands clasped loosely on his knees, his eyes turned upon his hostess with a look of almost infantile candour.  It was as if he mutely implored her to forget yesterday’s encounter, and on no account to mention in what compromising company he had been seen.  His engaging smile seemed to take for granted that she was a lady of pity and understanding, who would never have the heart to give a poor prodigal away.  His eyes intimated that Mrs. Majendie knew what it amounted to, that awful prodigality of his.

But Mrs. Majendie had no illusions concerning sinners with engaging smiles and beautiful manners.  And with every tick of the clock he deepened the impression of his insolence and levity.  His very charm and the flush and brilliance that were part of it went to swell the prodigal’s account.  The instinct that had wakened in her knew them, the lights and colours, the heralding banners and vivid signs, all the paraphernalia of triumphant sin.  She turned upon her guest the cold eyes of a condign destiny.

By the time dinner was served it had dawned on Gorst that he was looking in Mrs. Majendie for something that was not there.  He might even have had some inkling of her resolution; he sat at his friend’s table so consciously on sufferance, with an oppressed, extinguished air, eating his dinner as if it choked him, like the last sad meal in a beloved house.

Majendie, too, felt himself drawn in and folded in the gloom cast by his wife’s protesting presence.  The shadow of it wrapped them even after Anne had left the dining-room, as though her indignant spirit had remained behind to preserve her protest.  Gorst had changed his oppression for a nervous restlessness intolerable to Majendie.

“My dear fellow,” he said, “what is the matter with you?”

“How should I know?” said Gorst with a spurt of ill-temper.  “I’m not a nerve specialist.”

Majendie looked at him attentively.  “I say, you mustn’t go in for nerves, you know; you can’t afford it.”

“My dear Walter, I can’t afford anything, if it comes to that.”  He paused with an obscure air of injury and foreboding.  “Not even, it seems, the most innocent amusements.  At the rate,” he added, “I have to pay for them.”  Again he brooded, while Majendie wondered at him, in brotherly anxiety.  “I suppose,” Gorst said suddenly, “I can go up and see Edith, can’t I?”

He spoke as if he doubted, whether, in the wreck of his world, with all his “innocent amusements,” that supreme consolation would be still open to him.

“Of course you can,” said Majendie.  “It’s the best thing you can do.  I told her you were coming.”