Tietjens said:
"I'll come in to-morrow night if I may. That will give Ferens time to get back into his attic."
That morning, at breakfast, four months having passed, Tietjens had received a letter from his wife. She asked, without any contrition at all, to be taken back. She was fed-up with Perowne and Brittany.
Tietjens looked up at Macmaster. Macmaster was already half out of his chair, looking at him with enlarged, steel-blue eyes, his beard quivering. By the time Tietjens spoke Macmaster had his hand on the neck of the cut-glass brandy decanter in the brown wood tantalus. Tietjens said:
"Sylvia asks me to take her back."
Macmaster said:
"Have a little of this!"
Tietjens was about to say: "No," automatically. He changed that to:
"Yes. Perhaps. A liqueur glass."
He noticed that the lip of the decanter agitated, tinkling on the glass. Macmaster must be trembling.