Still Tavernake did not speak.  Pritchard looked at him curiously.

“Say,” he went on, “I have come here to do you a service, if I can.  So far as I know at present, this very wonderful young lady has kept on the right side of the law.  But see here, Tavernake, she’s been on the wrong side of everything that’s decent and straight all her days.  She married that poor creature for his money, and set herself deliberately to drive him off his head.  Last night’s tragedy was her doing, not his, though he, poor devil, will have to end his days in an asylum, and the lady will have his money to make herself more beautiful than ever with.  Now I am going to let you behind the scenes, my young friend.”

Then Tavernake rose to his feet.  In the shabby little room he seemed to have grown suddenly taller.  He struck the crazy table with his clenched fist so that the crockery upon it rattled.  Pritchard was used to seeing men—­strong men, too—­moved by various passions, but in Tavernake’s face he seemed to see new things.

“Pritchard,” Tavernake exclaimed, “I don’t want to hear another word!”

Pritchard smiled.

“Look here,” he said, “what I am going to tell you is the truth.  What I am going to tell you I’d as soon say in the presence of the lady as here.”

Tavernake took a step forward and Pritchard suddenly realized the man who had thrown himself through that little opening in the wall, one against three, without a thought of danger.

“If you say a single word more against her,” Tavernake shouted hoarsely, “I shall throw you out of the room!”

Pritchard stared at him.  There was something amazing about this young man’s attitude, something which he could not wholly grasp.  He could see, too, that Tavernake’s words were so few simply because he was trembling under the influence of an immense passion.

“If you won’t listen,” Pritchard declared, slowly, “I can’t talk.  Still, you’ve got common sense, I take it.  You’ve the ordinary powers of judging between right and wrong, and knowing when a man or a woman’s honest.  I want to save you—­”

“Silence!” Tavernake exclaimed.  “Look here, Pritchard,” he went on, breathing a little more naturally now, “you came here meaning to do the right thing—­I know that.  You’re all right, only you don’t understand.  You don’t understand the sort of person I am.  I am twenty-four years old, I have worked for my own living up here in London since I was twelve.  I was a man, so far as work and independence went, at fifteen.  Since then I have had my shoulder to the wheel; I have lived on nothing; I have made a little money where it didn’t seem possible.  I have worried my way into posts which it seemed that no one could think of giving me, but all the time I have lived in a little corner of the world —­like that.”

His finger suddenly described a circle in the air.