He laid Molly's little note down beside it.
Tyson stared at the letters rather stupidly. That correspondence was one of the details he had forgotten. He also stared at Stanistreet, who looked horribly ill. Then he took up Molly's note and examined it without reading a word. It was crumpled, dirty, almost illegible, as if Louis had thrust it violently into his pocket, and carried it about with him for weeks.
"If you really don't know what it means," said Stanistreet, "I'll tell you. It means that your wife had only one idea in her head. She didn't understand it in the least, but she stuck to it. She thought of it from morning till night, when other women would have been amusing themselves; thought of it ever since you married her and left her. Unfortunately, it kept her from thinking much of anything else. There were many things she might have thought of—she might have thought of me. But she didn't."
"Thanks. I know that as well as you. Did it ever occur to you to think of her?"
"I shouldn't be here if I hadn't thought of her."
"Oh—" Tyson stepped over to the empty fireplace. It was the only thing in the room that was left intact.
His attitude suggested that he was lord of the hearth, and that his position was indestructible.
"Since you considered your testimony to my wife's character so indispensable, may I ask why you waited five weeks to give it?"
Tyson could play with words like a man of letters; he fought with them like the City tailor's son.
"You post your letters rather late. I left town an hour after I got hers."