"Well, it's just this," he said, "and it's awfully hard for me even to hint such a thing to you. But, you know, Rathbone had recently made rather a friend of poor Eustace Charliewood. I like Charliewood; you never did. A man's point of view and a girl's point of view are quite different about a man. But of course I can't pretend that Charliewood is exactly, well—er—what you might call—I don't know quite how to put it, Marjorie."
"I know," she said with a shudder of disgust "I know. Go on."
"Well, just before Rathbone disappeared those two seemed to have been about together a good deal, and of course Charliewood is a man who has some rather strange acquaintances, especially in the theatrical world. That is to say, in the sub-theatrical world. Marjorie, I hardly know how to put it to you, and I think I had better stop."
"Go on!" she cried once more.
"Well," he said wearily, "Rathbone was a good fellow, no doubt, but he is a young man, and no girl really knows what the life of a young man really is or may be. I know that Charliewood introduced Rathbone to a certain girl. Oh, Marjorie, I can't go on, these suspicions are unworthy."
"Terribly unworthy," she cried, standing up to her full height, and then in a moment she drooped to him, and once more she asked him to go on.
He told her of certain meetings, saying that there could have been, of course, no harm in them, skilfully hinting at this or that, and then testifying to his utter disbelief in the suspicions that he himself had provoked. She listened to him, growing whiter and whiter. At last his hesitating speech died away into silence, and she stood looking at him.
"It might be," she whispered, half to herself, "it might be, but I do not think it could be. No man could be so unutterably cruel, so unutterably base. I have made you tell me this, William, and I know that you yourself do not believe it. He could not be so wicked as to sacrifice everything for one of those people."
And then Sir William rose.
"No," he said, "he couldn't. I feel it, though I don't know him. Marjorie, no living man could leave you for one of the vulgar syrens of the half world."