"Not back to this," she insisted.

He shrugged his shoulders and held the paper up between them.

"If you don't want me back, well, I shall understand that. But I shan't come back to this." She walked to the door, and looked back; she could not see his face for the paper. She made a little despairing movement with her hands, but turned away again without saying more, and stole quietly out of the room.

John Fanshaw dashed his paper to the ground and sprang to his feet. He gave a long sigh. He had been in mortal terror—he thought she was going to talk about the money. That peril was past. He flung his hardly lighted cigar into the grate and walked up and down the room in a frenzy of unhappiness. Yes, that peril was past—she had said nothing. But he knew it was in her heart; and he knew how it must appear to her. Heavens, did it not appear like that to him? But she should never know that he felt like that about it. That would be to give up his grievance, to abandon his superiority, to admit that there was little or nothing to choose between them,—between her, the sinner, and him, who profited by the sin, whose salvation the sin had been, who knew it had been his salvation and had accepted salvation from it. No, no; he must never acknowledge that. He must stick to his position. It was monstrous to think he would own that his guilt was comparable to hers.

He sank back into his chair again and looked round the empty room. He thought of Christine upstairs, alone too. What a state of things! "Why did she? My God, why did she?" he muttered, and then fell to lashing himself once more into a useless fury, pricking his anger lest it should sleep, setting imagination to work on recollection, torturing himself, living again through the time of her treachery, elaborating all his grievance—lest by chance she should seem less of a sinner than before, lest by chance his own act should loom too large, lest by chance he might be weak and open his heart and find forgiveness for his wife and comrade.

"By God, she had no excuse!" he muttered, striking the table with his fist. "And I—why, the thing was settled before I knew. It was settled, I say!" Then he thought that if things went on doing well he would be able to pay Caylesham sooner than the letter of his bond demanded. Then, when he had paid Caylesham off—ah, then the superiority would be in no danger, there would be no taunt to fear. Why, yes, he would pay Caylesham off quite soon. Because things were going so well. Now to-day, in the City, what a stroke he had made! If he were to tell Christine that——! For a moment he smiled, thinking how she would pat his cheek and say, "Clever old John!" in her pretty half-derisive way; how she would——

He broke off with a groan. No; by heaven, he'd tell her nothing. His life was nothing to her—thanks to what she'd done—to what she had done. Oh, he did well to be angry!—Even to think of what she had done——!

So he struggled, lest perchance forgiveness and comradeship should win the day.

CHAPTER XX
THE HOUR OF WRATH

As soon as the first shot was fired, Tom Courtland struck his flag. There was no fight in him. His career was compromised, and by now his affairs were seriously involved. He resigned his seat; he wasn't going to wait to be turned out, he said, either by divorce or by bankruptcy, or by both at once. He never went home now. As a last concession to appearances, he took a room at his club. Mrs. Bolton now urged him to fight—since things had gone so far. Of course he would have to tell lies! But there were circumstances in which everybody told lies! She was ready to back him through thick and thin. If they could get Lady Harriet into the box and cross-examine her thoroughly, they could rely on a great deal of sympathy from a jury of husbands. It was really a good fighting case—given the lies, of course. She urged fighting, which was unselfish of her from one point of view, since an undefended case would do her little real harm, while a cross-examination in open Court could not be a pleasant ordeal for her, any more than it ought to be for Harriet Courtland. But she liked Tom—although incurable habit had caused her to make his affairs so involved—and she hated that Harriet should "have a walk over." She was angry with Tom because he gave in directly, and took it all "lying down," as she said. But Tom was broken; he could only mutter that he did not "care a damn" what they did; it was all over for him. His bristly hair began to turn a dull grey in these troublesome days. When he was not with Mrs. Bolton he was haunting the streets and parks, hoping he might meet his girls taking their walk with the maid or with Suzette Bligh. Such stray encounters were his only chance of ever seeing them now—the only chance of ever seeing them in the future, he supposed, unless the Court gave him "access." And much pleasure there would be in access, with Harriet to tell them the sort of man he was before every such visit as the law might charingly dole out to him! He grumbled disconsolately about everything—the suit, his affairs, his children, the access, all of it—to Mrs. Bolton; but he did and tried to do nothing. He was in a condition of moral collapse.