"Didn't she? Wasn't that it?"
"Well, if you insist on knowing, that was it, more or less.... But what on earth's the good of diving back into things that happened so many years ago?"
"We can't help it," he said, uneasily. "We haven't done with the past yet.... We can't push it away and say 'That's finished with.' It never is finished with." He paused and then went on: "And so she thought that it was you who persuaded me?"
"I didn't deny it."
"But why didn't you? You should have denied it. It was absurd for you to be blamed. You didn't persuade me at all—I made up my mind myself. It wasn't your fault."
"You thanked me in your letter for what I had said, anyhow."
"Did I? Did I?" His eyes sharpened as if searching for something inside his own head. "I don't remember that letter. I only remember sitting up all night and making up my mind that I couldn't—I couldn't..." Some spasm of memory seemed to give him eagerness; he went on: "Don't you see why we must help Severn? ... I couldn't then—he mustn't now—don't you feel how it is? ... We must help him—he's unhappy—he's been driven into all this by his unhappiness. It's not his fault."
At any rate, we had come back to the main argument. That was something. "I'm afraid," I said, "that you're in danger of flying to the other extreme about Severn. I believe, as you do, that he's fundamentally a decent fellow, but the fact remains that he's infernally clever and can lie beautifully whenever it suits him. It seems to me that it's hardly likely that the right's all on his side. Most probably Helen has a case, if she were here to tell it."
"Oh, I know ... it's not her fault."
"You say it's not her fault, and not Severn's fault either. Then whose fault do you suppose it is?"