"No—unless you express a wish. Otherwise I shall go on as I am going. I'll see Mr. Endicott, and when Myles is fit again I'll see him. Yes, that's the road of wisdom. I'll meet him and say, 'Now, old chap, explode and give me the full force of the discharge. Tell me what you mean and what you want.'"
Honor, for her part, found loyalty wakened rather than weakened by her husband's remonstrances. She desired to return to him—to get back to his heart. Christopher wearied her just now, and when Mark Endicott entered from the sick-room, Honor bid Yeoland farewell and hastened to Myles.
Yeoland chatted awhile, shared some spirit and water with the blind man, and then, on a sudden, after private determination to do no such thing, broached the problem in his mind.
"Look here," he said; "I've had a nasty jar to-night, Mr. Endicott, and I'm in no end of a muddle. You know that I'm a well-meaning brute in my way, even granted that the way is generally wrong. But I wouldn't really hurt a fly, whereas now, in blissful ignorance, I've done worse. I've hurt a man—-a man I feel the greatest respect for—the husband of my best friend in the world. It's jolly trying, because he and I are built so differently. There's an inclination on his part to turn this thing into the three-volume form apparently. It's such ghastly rot when you think of what I really am. In plain English, Stapledon doesn't like his wife to see so much of me. She only discovered this deplorable fact to-day, and it bewildered her as much as it staggered me. Heaven's my judge, I never guessed that he was looking at me so. Nor did Honor. Such kindred spirits as we are—and now, in a moment of weakness, the man bid her see me no more! Of course, he's too big to go in for small nonsense of that kind, and he'll withdraw such an absurd remark as soon as he's cool again; but straws show which way the wind blows, and I want to get at my duty. Tell me that, and I'll call you blessed."
"What is Honor to you?"
"The best part of my life, if you must know—on the highest plane of it."
"Don't talk about 'planes'! That's all tom-foolery! You're a wholesome, healthy man and woman—anyway, other people must assume so. I'll give you credit for believing yourself, however. I'll even allow your twaddle about planes does mean something to you, because honestly you seem deficient—degenerate as far as your flesh is concerned. All the same, Stapledon is right in resenting this arrangement with all his heart and soul. His patience has amazed me. Two men can't share a woman under our present system of civilisation."
"Which is to say a wife may not have any other intellectual kindred spirit but her husband. D'you mean that?"
"No, I don't. I mean that when a man openly says that a woman is the best part of his life, her husband can't be blamed for resenting it."
"But what's the good of lying about the thing? Surely circumstances alter cases? It was always so. He knew that Honor and I loved each other in our queer way long before he came on the scene. She can't stop loving me because she has married him."