"Yet you wrote a play for her, I think?"
"So you have heard," murmured the other, wrinkling his forehead, "of my modest effort. No. I wrote it for my own amusement. I had become rather tired of being called Dr. Dryasdust. " He placed the palms of his hands together before him, weirdly as though he were going to dive, and hesitated. "In my younger days I suffered from illusions. These lay in a belief that the proper value of historical study consisted in its economic and political significance. But I am old enough now to be aware that almost the only gift no historian has ever possessed is any knowledge whatever of human character. I am now, I fear, an old satyr. You will be informed (I think you have been informed?) of my senile ecstasies over Miss Tait? Your expression indicates it. That is only partly true. In Miss Tait I admired the charms of all the dead courtesans with whom I should like to have had love affairs."
Masters drew his hand across his forehead.
"Don't mix me up, if you please! — You encouraged Miss Tait to sleep out in that pavilion?"
"Yes."
"Which," Masters went on musingly, "you had got repaired and restored, and which was used in the old days for a king to visit his fancy ladies on the sly… "
"Of course, of course, of course," interposed Maurice, hastily and rather as though he were impatient with himself for having overlooked something. "I should have understood. You were thinking of a secret passage underground, perhaps, to explain the absence of marks in the snow? I can reassure you, There is nothing of the kind."
Masters was watching him; and Masters pounced now. "We might have to take it to pieces, sir. Tear off the panelling, you know, which you mightn't like… "
"You wouldn't dare do that," said Maurice. His voice suddenly went high.
"Or take up the floors. If they're the original marble, it would be a bit hard on you, sir; but to satisfy ourselves…"