"Well?"
"I suppose you thought I was going to welcome you with open arms on Liverpool landing-stage, eh?"
"Not in the least. I only hoped that our desire to help Geoffrey would enable us to treat each other civilly."
Her eyes flashed. "Yes, that sounds as if I'm in the wrong, doesn't it? But let me tell you this—that though I am going to help Geoffrey, my feelings towards him remain exactly as they were before."
"And what were they?"
She said quietly: "I don't like him. I don't care what you think of me for saying it—it's the honest truth. And I'm not sentimental enough to think that a railway-accident can make any difference."
The beer came then, and a sudden lurch of the boat sent half of it spilling over our hands. The bartender, white-faced and dishevelled, retired again to endure his sufferings in solitude. She went on, more quickly: "Oh, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking of Geoffrey as you know him—how decent he's been to you, and all that. He has been decent to you, I'll admit—he's been decent enough to me in that sort of way. But—oh, Hilton—I'm friends with you again now, and I must tell you—he's not straight—you know what I mean, don't you? He's not the sort of man you can trust!"
"Good heavens, I think I'd trust my life to him——"
She interrupted: "I daresay you would. I daresay a lot of people would.... Perhaps I ought to have said that he's not the sort of man his wife can trust."
And then, while the boat rolled so badly that once or twice we were almost battered from wall to wall, she told me. Oddly, perhaps, I didn't realize her complete meaning till she was half-way through—not till she said: "If he only had that one fault in the world (and perhaps he has), it would be enough to make me despise him—for I value faithfulness higher than anything."