“You must come out and lunch with Maisie and me one day this week,” said he.  “She would love to see you.”

“Wait till you’re married,” said I, “and then we’ll consider it.  At present Maisie is under the social dominion of her parents.”

“Well—­what of it?”

“Just that,” said I.

Then the truth dawned on him.  He grew excited and said it was damnable.  He wasn’t going to stand by and see people believe a lot of scandalous lies about me.  He had no idea people had given me the cold shoulder.  He would jolly well (such were his words) take a something (I forget the adjective) megaphone and trumpet about society what a splendid fellow I was.

“I’ll tell everybody the whole silly-ass story about myself from beginning to end,” he declared.

I checked him.  “You’re very generous, my dear boy,” said I, “but you’ll do me a favour by letting folks believe what they like.”  And then I explained, as delicately as I could, how his sudden championship could be of little advantage to me, and might do him considerable harm.

In his impetuous manner he cut short my carefully-expressed argument.

“Rubbish!  Heaps of people I know are already convinced that I was keeping Lola Brandt and that you took her from me in the ordinary vulgar way—­”

“Yes, yes,” I interrupted, shrinking.  “That’s why I order you, in God’s name, to leave the whole thing alone.”

“But confound it, man!  I’ve come out of it all right, why shouldn’t you?  Even supposing Lola was a loose woman—­”

I threw up my hand.  “Stop!”

He looked disconcerted for a moment.

“We know she isn’t, but for the sake of argument—­”

“Don’t argue,” said I.  “Let us drop it.”

“But hang it all!” he shouted in desperation.  “Can’t I do something!  Can’t I go and kick somebody?”

I lost my self-control.  I rose and put both my hands on his shoulders and looked him in the eyes.

“You can kick anybody you please whom you hear breathe a word against the honour and purity of Madame Lola Brandt.”

Then I walked away, knowing I had betrayed myself, and tried to light a cigar with fingers that shook.  There was a pause.  Dale stood with his back to the fireplace, one foot on the fender.  The cigar took some lighting.  The pause grew irksome.

“My regard for Madame Brandt,” said I at last, “is such that I don’t wish to discuss her with any one.”  I looked at Dale and met his keen eyes fixed on me.  The faintest shadow of a smile played about his mouth.

“Very well,” said he dryly, “we won’t discuss her.  But all the same, my dear Simon, I can’t help being interested in her; and as you’re obviously the same, it seems rather curious that you don’t know where she is.”

“Do you doubt me?” I asked, somewhat staggered by his tone.

“Good Heaven’s, no!  But if she has disappeared, I’m convinced that something has happened which I know nothing of.  Of course, it’s none of my business.”