Napier seemed to appeal to Guy: “Iris has always put her friends before herself. And the only time in her life she ever told a lie we all rushed to believe her. And that’s why Iris and I never saw each other after Fenwick’s death until three nights before I married Venice. I wasn’t to know then that I was marrying an angel, and so I couldn’t tell her what had happened to me and Iris. Iris told me about Fenwick that night. I made her. You see, until then I’d never wanted to see her, because the Iris that Boy had killed himself for wasn’t the Iris I’d loved as a boy——”
“But she is now, Napier,” Iris whispered bitterly. “Why can’t you let be, why can’t you!”
“Because,” Napier flashed, “I love you, and I’m damn well going to have these people respect you as I do.... That lie Iris spread about the reason for Boy’s death was because she didn’t care what happened to her. She just didn’t care. But she wanted people to think as well of Boy as people can of a suicide. She wanted Gerald to keep his little tin-god hero. And she had it all her own way because the doctor at the hotel in Deauville was a friend of hers and let nothing out. She just didn’t care what people thought of her, and so she said that Boy had died ‘for purity.’ That might mean anything, and so of course we all took it to mean the worst thing as regards Iris. Oh, she knew we would. Well, so Boy did die ‘for purity.’ He was mad with love for Iris, and from the moment she had to give me up he pestered her to marry him. Then one day she surprised him by saying she would. I suppose she surprised him by giving way in the end, and instead of the cad saying he couldn’t, he took her while he had the chance. He——”
“Napier!”
“He had syphilis when he married her, and went mad when he realised what he had done. That’s all. There’s your Boy Fenwick. There’s Iris, that’s Iris!” He turned to her blindly. She was staring, so thoughtfully, at the carpet. “Come, Iris. We’ll go now. And we’ll begin again from the time you and I said good-bye under Harrod’s.”
“You’ve taken from me,” the husky voice whispered to the carpet, “the only gracious thing I ever did in my life. Yes, let’s go.”
They were going in silence. Iris had one foot in the garden when across the silence darted the neat figure of Sir Maurice. He touched her shoulder. “Iris,” he said. She looked round at him with huge, sleep-walking eyes.
“Iris,” Sir Maurice said. He was holding out his hand.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I’ve hated you so bitterly, so long. I can’t. Maurice, please don’t ask me.”
“I do ask you, Iris. I beg it from you. You are good.”