“You’re so devilishly unsympathetic,” he complained sulkily. “I notice you take no interest in another man’s affairs... You never trouble to inquire how my suit prospers.”
Lawless made no immediate response. He took a cigar from a case of Van Bleit’s that lay open on the table, snipped the end deliberately, and proceeded to light it. When he had had two or three whiffs at it, he took it from his mouth, leant forward with his elbows on the table and looked squarely at his host.
“I don’t need to inquire,” he said. “I’ve been observing... You are making no headway at all.”
“That’s true enough,” Van Bleit replied, reddening. “Though, dash it all! you needn’t be quite so brutally frank. I’m not making headway. Sometimes I fancy I have gone back a few paces. At one time she liked me—I’ll swear she did. She used to appear glad to see me. That was before you turned up.”
He paused, and eyed Lawless for a moment suspiciously. The alteration in Mrs Lawless’ manner and the advent of Lawless on the scene being contemporaneous roused a sudden doubt in his mind.
“You’ve not been giving me away?” he asked... “You haven’t told her of any of our little sprees? If I thought you’d made mischief! ... I’ve noticed you talking with her, though you as good as told me she’d sooner talk with the devil.”
Lawless puffed away at his cigar indifferently.
“My good fellow,” he said, “she has not the faintest idea that you are a friend of mine. And we do not discuss sprees, or anything of that nature. The only topic she ever gets on with me is that of my morals, which ever since I have known her have caused her distress and annoyance. It is a topic which you may easily imagine holds no interest for me.”
Van Bleit looked only half convinced.
“I’d let a woman like that talk to me about anything,” he returned. “I’d let her try her hand at reforming me—I would reform for her sake.”