"It's much better. There's nothing to make a coward of you now. You're free."
He half held out his hand, but it was only a convulsive, dying movement.
He let her go.
PART III
I
1
As to Gyp Labelle, if she had known the part she played in their lives, which in the nature of things was not possible, she would have broken into that famous laugh of hers.
To her, at any rate, it would have seemed immensely, excruciatingly funny.
As the result of an exchange of two remarkably casual notes they met at Brown's for dinner. Brown's had occurred to both of them as a natural meeting-place. Cosgrave, it is true, had only dined there once and that free (as a friend of Brown's friend), but the impression made upon a stomach accustomed to Soho and tea-shop fare had been indelible. Stonehouse himself dined there as a matter of custom. Besides, there was a touch of sentiment to their choice—a rather bitter sharp-tasting sentiment like an aperitif.
Brown himself had aged considerably, and did not remember very well.
"Old friend of the doctor's, sir? Well, so am I. Getting on—getting on. But I'm waiting till I can squeeze my money's worth out of him. When's that knighthood coming, doctor? I want to be able to tell that story—as good a story as you'd read anywhere. He's got to keep me alive, sir, till it comes true."