“Carty,” said Evanston, “you are wasting your time and mine. I know that a man is foolish to be jealous of any other man, and I know that Ned Palfrey is all right. I’m sorry for Palfrey. He has as much cause for resentment against me as I have against him. If it hadn’t been for me he would have married her. If he marries her later on, I shall have no feeling about it. But I can’t stand the situation as it is, and I don’t care to have you tell me there is nothing in it.”
“You have no proof,” said Carteret, “that there is anything in it.”
“No proof?” said Evanston. He smiled bitterly. “Only the proof of my eyes.”
Carteret threw away his cigarette. “The proof of your eyes!” he said.
Evanston nodded. “Perhaps you remember,” he went on, “that just after the crash I disappeared for a week.”
“Yes,” said Carteret; “it was two years ago, just before Christmas.”
“People said that I was hiding from my creditors; that I had gone to Australia; and some that I had killed myself.”
“That was what Edith believed,” said Mr. Carteret. “It nearly killed her.”
Evanston laughed scornfully. “Women don’t die of such things,” he said. “Well, to go on, it happened that the day I disappeared, Palfrey called upon my wife. We were at the house in 70th street then.” He paused uneasily, and Mr. Carteret began to wonder. “I came up-town late in the afternoon,” he continued, “and let myself in with a key. I heard voices in the drawing-room and went down the hall. The curtains in the drawing-room doorway had fallen apart, and I looked in. Palfrey was there. They were standing by the fireplace and had dropped their voices so that I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I saw him take a step toward her, and then he took her hand.” Evanston stopped. “And then,” he added, “the sawdust dropped out of my doll.”
“What happened?” asked Mr. Carteret.