"Look here. . . . Your father. . . . I'm concerned about your father. . . . Didn't Sylvia perhaps tell him some of the things that distressed him?"
Tietjens said distinctly:
"No, sir. That responsibility cannot be put on to Sylvia. My father chose to believe things that were said against me by a perfect—or a nearly perfect—stranger. . . ." He added: "As a matter of fact, Sylvia and my father were not on any sort of terms. I don't believe they exchanged two words for the last five years of my father's life."
The general's eyes were fixed with an extreme hardness on Tietjens'. He watched Tietjens' face, beginning with the edges round the nostrils, go chalk white. He said: "He knows he's given his wife away! . . . Good God!" With his face colourless, Tietjens' eyes of porcelain-blue stuck out extraordinarily. The general thought: "What an ugly fellow! His face is all crooked!" They remained looking at each other.
In the silence the voices of men talking over the game of House came as a murmur to them. A rudimentary card game monstrously in favour of the dealer. When you heard voices going on like that you knew they were playing House. . . . So they had had their dinners.
The general said:
"It isn't Sunday, is it?"
Tietjens said:
"No, sir; Thursday, the seventeenth, I think, of January. . . ."
The general said: