On the way to the head of the staircase they passed another door. He laid his hand upon the brass knob.
"I promised I'd show you real life. There's more inside here. Do you want to see it?"
"No! no!" The girl shrank away, and pulled her skirts from the panel.
"All right, then. Don't be afraid. I haven't been in myself yet. I'm not going to. The fiend! oh! the fiend, Flash! A little child like that—a little boy born blind! He never saw the sun. Look out of this window over the heath and think of it. For all he ever saw he might have lived and died at the bottom of a well. I used to describe things for him though. He was stupid with some people, but he knew my voice. Gad, how he knew it! You'd see the poor little devil's eyes straining, straining, and he'd struggle and kick and push things out of the way till he found me. Oh! the incarnate fiend!"
"Bryan! She's dead, remember."
"Dead! What do I care? If she wasn't I'd have killed her myself. And she knew it. She was the one I cared for least. A cold, vicious, bargaining jade. I tried to get the boy away, but she was too d—d clever. So many hundreds a year more, that's all he meant to her. Do you remember my asking you once if you were fond of kids? I was thinking of him when I asked you that. Some day, perhaps—I thought——'Cos some good women are the devil over things like that, Flash; and if I'd had a dozen born right they shouldn't have come in front of him—This is nice talk to a girl!"
"I don't mind, Bryan. I don't seem to mind a bit now. I think I've missed my proper delicacy, somehow."
He stared at her. "You haven't missed your health, at any rate. You must be a robust little animal for all your color. This time yesterday, Flash, think of it! If it was put in a book, who'd believe it? I wonder if everything that ever can happen a man and a girl has happened us, or if there's more coming to-morrow."
They had been talking in the dining-room. He went over to the sideboard for a drink and stopped suddenly. A half-crown was lying on the top of the buffet. He brought it over to the light, lying flat in the palm of his hand.
"This is a rummy coincidence, Flash," he said, without taking his eyes off it. "D'you know, years and years ago in Vienna, where I was a thing that danced and trailed the conquering sabre past the Töchterschulen in the Hohenmark on court days, I spun a coin this very size to decide a rather important matter for me. 'Tails I go on; heads I go out.' I wasn't bluffing. I was pretty hard hit, or thought I was. But I was young, too, and I'll never forget my feelings when I looked down and saw the double eagle—I'd shut my eyes while it spun, and I remember feeling behind in my hip pocket——Hello! Where did this come from?"