’No!  You go too far, Grail.  You accused me of baseness, and I have never had a base thought.’

Then came a long silence.  Gilbert stood motionless, Egremont walked slowly from place to place.  The point at issue between the two men was changed; anger and suspicion were at an end, but so was all hope of restoring the old union.

Then Egremont said: 

’You must tell me one thing plainly.  Do you still doubt my word when I say that I knew nothing of her flight from you, and know nothing of where she now is?’

‘I believe you,’ was answered, simply.

’And more than that.  Do you think me capable of wronging her and you in the way you suspected?’

‘I was wrong.  I was unjust to you.’

Grail could suffer jealousy, but was incapable of malice.  The stab of the revelation that had been made might go through and through his heart, but the wound would breed no evil humours.  He made his admission with the relief which comes of recovered self-respect.

‘Thank you for that, Grail,’ Walter replied, moved as a gentle nature always is by magnanimity.

After another pause, he said: 

’May I ask you anything more about her?  Had she money?  Could she have gone far?’

‘At most she had a few pence.’

‘Did she leave no written word?’

‘Yes.  She wrote something for her sister.’

Walter hesitated.  Grail, after a struggle with himself, repeated the substance of Thyrza’s note.

A few more words were interchanged, then Gilbert said: 

‘I will leave you now, Mr. Egremont.’

Walter dreaded this parting.  Could he let Grail go from him and say no word about the library?  Yet what was to be said?  Everything was hopelessly at an end; the hint of favour from him to the other was henceforth insult.  Gilbert was moving towards him, but he could not look up.  Forcing himself to speak: 

’If you find her—­if you hear anything—­will you tell me?  I mean only, will you let me know the fact that you have news?’

‘Yes, I will.’

At length their eyes met.  Then Grail held out his hand, and Egremont clasped it firmly.

‘This is not the end between us,’ he said, huskily.  ’You must wish that you had never seen me, but I can never lose the hope that we may some day be friends again.’

The haggard man went his way in silence.  Egremont, throwing himself upon a seat in utter weariness, felt more alone than ever yet in his life. . . .

Who or what was left to him now?  A little while ago, when he had felt that his connection with the world of wealth and refinement was practically at an end, it seemed more than a substitute to look forward to intimacy with that one household in Lambeth, and to associations that would arise thence.  He believed that it would henceforth content him to have friends in the sphere to which he belonged by birth, and, for the needs of his mind, to find companionship among his books.  He saw before him a career of practical usefulness such as only a man in his peculiar position could pursue with unwavering zeal.  What now was to become of his future?  Where were his friends?