"They exist; but they don't commit murders—not in Europe, at any rate," said Mr. Flexen. "In the East and in the United States it's different perhaps. Murder is always as much of a blunder as a crime. It makes people so keen after the criminal. No: no really intelligent criminal commits murder."
"Of course, that's true," said Mr. Manley readily. He paused, then added in a thoughtful tone: "I wonder whether the war has weakened our conception of the sanctity of human life?"
"I shouldn't wonder," said Mr. Flexen; and their talk drifted into a discussion of generalities.
He was glad that he was staying at the Castle. His talk with Mr. Manley had been illuminating.
Olivia dined in her sitting-room, and with a poor appetite. Away from Grey, she had fallen back into her anxiety and fearfulness. Wilkins was waiting on her, an insensible block of a fellow; but even he perceived that she was very little aware of what she was eating, and now and again paused, and in some worrying train of thought forgot that she was dining at all.
After dinner, however, her mood changed. The fearfulness and anxiety at times vanished from her face, and a pleasant, eager expectancy took their place.
At a quarter to nine she took a dark wrap from her wardrobe, went quietly down the stairs, and slipped out of the side door, across the east lawn, and into the path through the shrubbery, unseen. Grey had suggested that he should come to the Castle after dinner to spend the evening with her; but they had decided that it would be wiser to meet in the pavilion. There would be talk if he spent the evening with her so soon after her husband's death, with his body still unburied in the house. This was the only mention they made of him all the time they spent together. Besides, both of them found the pavilion in the wood a far more delightful meeting-place than the Castle. In the pavilion they felt that they were out of the world.
Grey, too anxious and restless to await her at the pavilion, had come down the wood and into the end of the path through the shrubbery. It startled her to come upon him so suddenly. But when they came out of the shrubbery into the moonlit aisle of the wood, the fearfulness and anxiety and restlessness had vanished utterly from their faces; both of them were smiling.
They walked slowly, saying little, touching now and again as they swayed in their walk along the turf. It seemed wiser not to light the candles in the pavilion. The moonlight, shining through the high windows, gave them light enough to see one another's eyes. It was all they needed. The time passed quickly in the ineffable confidences of lovers. They had a hundred things to tell one another, a hundred things to ask one another, in their effort to attain that oneness which is the aim of all true love. But in their joy in being together, in the joy of both of them, there was a feverishness, a sense that it was a menaced joy which must needs be brief. Again they were striving to wring the most out of the hour which was so swiftly passing. At times the sense of danger which hung over them was so strong, that they clung to one another like frightened children in the dark.
Though Mr. Flexen had at the time shown himself somewhat unbelieving in the matter of Mr. Manley's conclusions about the character and temperament of Grey and Olivia, the impression they had made on him grew stronger. He was too good a judge of men not to perceive that the budding dramatist had the intelligent imagination which makes for real shrewdness, and he was not disposed to underrate the value of the imagination in forming judgments of men and women. Probably Colonel Grey was a man of less intensity of emotion than Mr. Manley had declared, and Lady Loudwater less subtile and intelligent. But, after making these reductions, he had here possible actors in a drama of passion; and though it was his experience that money, not passion, is the most frequent motive of murder, he must take the probability of Lord Loudwater's murder being a crime of passion into account, though, of course, the violent Hutchings, threatened with ruin, would undoubtedly benefit from a monetary point of view by the murder. At the same time, Hutchings had just had an interview, which had gone better probably than he had expected, with an uncommonly pretty girl.