"I beg your pardon," Choate answered. "I spoke on impulse."
"Yes. But I think you'd better go on."
Alston kept silence. He was looking out of the window now, pale and immovably obstinate.
"Do you, by any chance," said Jeff, "think Esther is afraid of me?"
Choate faced round upon him, immediately grateful to him.
"That's it," he said. "You've said it. And since it's so, and you recognise it, why, you see, Jeff, you really mustn't, you know."
"Mustn't go there?" said Jeff almost foolishly, the thing seemed to him so queer. "Mustn't see my wife, because she says she is afraid of me?"
"Because she is afraid of you," corrected Choate impulsively, in what he might have told himself was his liking for the right word. But he had a savage satisfaction in saying it. For the instant it made it seem as if he were defending Esther.
"I'd give a good deal," said Jeff slowly, "to hear just how Esther told you she was afraid of me. When was it, for example?"
"It was at no one time," said Choate unwillingly. Yet it seemed to him Jeff did deserve candour at all their hands.