"Should you have told me?"
"Yes. I couldn't have met you again and not told you. It was only a question of when." He looked at her piteously. "But, Lily, are you sure you understand? How do you know—what is it you've heard?"
"Kenneth saw her—Doris—let herself into the house, and he saw you at one of the windows. He told me almost by chance—without understanding. Father was there. But it wasn't so much what he said—that didn't amount to much. It was just that I knew it was true—I wasn't exactly surprised."
"But it all happened within the last week. Darling, I've been a hound, and God knows how I hate myself, but I've not been deceiving you. It's over, already—was over before your telegram ever reached me."
"It was a sort of passing madness, I suppose," Lily said, using the words that she had used to Philip.
Nicholas seized upon them eagerly.
"That's exactly what it was. And look here, Lily—at the cost of sounding like a cad, I'm going to tell you straight; it hasn't hurt Doris. You're not to think of her as a girl that I've betrayed. I've been a brute—but it's to you, not to her. Doris is—well, I wasn't the first—not by a long way."
"I didn't know—I didn't like her—but I didn't think she was that sort."
Nicholas shrugged his shoulders.
"Then you aren't in love with her?"