"Oh! did it, really? I supposed that I had expressed myself with perfect lucidity. But if any point appeared to you to need explanation, I am disengaged at the present time—I am quite willing to explain." "Thank you," Iglesias answered, "no explanation is necessary on your part, I believe, though perhaps a little is on mine. I must ask you to remember that I promised to help you within reasonable relation to my means. What constitutes a reasonable relation it is for me to judge, since I alone know what my means are. I regret to tell you that your last demand greatly exceeded that reasonable relation. I am therefore reluctantly obliged to refuse it."
"To refuse it?" Smyth exclaimed incredulously.
"Yes, to refuse it," Iglesias said calmly. "When your play is ready for production I am prepared to bear the cost of two representations, as I have already told you. But I am not prepared to make you unlimited advances meanwhile. To do so would be no kindness to you—"
"Wouldn't it?" Smyth broke out excitedly. "No kindness to me? Do you imagine I want kindness, that I would accept or even tolerate kindness from any man, and particularly from you? I offer you a magnificent investment, and you speak to me as though I was a beggar asking alms in the street. No kindness to me? This high moral tone does not become you in the very least, let me tell you, Mr. Iglesias. Do you suppose I am such a stoneblind ass as not to see what has been happening. Doesn't it occur to you that I hold your reputation in my two hands?"
"My reputation?" Iglesias repeated, a very blaze of pride and indignation in his eyes.
Smyth backed hastily away from him, with a livid face and shaking knees.
"No, no, Mr. Iglesias," he protested. "I was a fool to say that. But I am utterly beaten by work and by worry. I do not deny that you have behaved handsomely to me. But persistent injustice and cruelty have soured me. Is it wonderful? And then to-night those blatant young idiots, Farge and Worthington, have set my nerves on edge by their imbecility and conceit, till I really am not accountable for what I say. I had better go. We can talk of this at another time. I dare say I can manage for a day or two, though it will not be easy to do so. However, I am accustomed to rubbing shoulders with every created description of undeserved indignity and wretchedness. I will go. Good-night."
Iglesias entered his sitting-room, turned up the gas, and looked round at the orderly aspect of the place with a movement of relief. He ranged the bundles of papers upon the table. If he was to master their contents he would have to work far into the night, and the day had been a long one, full of application and of very varied emotions. He stood for a little space thinking of it all. The return to his familiar quarters at the bank had affected him less than he had expected. He had not felt it as a return to slavery.
"Thanks to the Church," he said gratefully, "which confers on her members the only perfect freedom, namely, freedom of soul, freedom of heavenly citizenship."
Then he thought of Poppy—thought very tenderly of that strangely captivating woman of many moods! How clever she was, how accurately she knew the ways of men! Her warnings regarding his dabbling in matters theatrical, for instance, and charities to unsuccessful playwrights.—And at that point Dominic Iglesias drew himself up short. For, in a flash, the truth came to him that Poppy St. John's hated "jackal of a husband" was none other than his fellow-lodger, de Courcy Smyth, whose shuffling footsteps he heard even now, nervelessly crossing and recrossing the floor of the room immediately above.