"'Oh, damn!' I said. The ash had at last revolted.
"'There you are, I told you he'd spoil it!' Consuelo said quickly.
"'I haven't even touched the thing!' Tristram protested—and we both really breathed for the first time since, two or three minutes before, we had heard the steps on the path....
"Well, that's all there is of it, the incident, and you must forgive me if I've taken a tiresome long time to get to it. Tristram, she, and I sat on in the summer house for an half-hour or so, talking rather constrainedly, but, anyway, peacefully. He showed that he had lost his trust in me, that he at last realised our friendship was over; his suspicions weren't more than allayed. But for the time being he simply hadn't anything to work on, for it wasn't so very unnatural that Consuelo, old friend as she was of mine, should sit by me in the summerhouse while I smoked my after-dinner cigar; and I wasn't going to give him another chance, because in that half-hour during which we sat on there I realised that Consuelo really wasn't for me, and that I was only making a fool of myself without advantage to anybody—and I decided with the last bit of strength I had left in me to do what I did the next morning, to run away. And, as I said, I didn't see her again for about ten years, and then very casually....
"As we sat on there for half an hour or so I couldn't of course lay my hands on the young man who had been eavesdropping outside the window and had stood me in such amazingly good stead. But it really was a strange and wonderful thing to do—to have even thought of doing that particular thing! And still more wonderful for such a little cad to have done it, for of course he was a cad to have been there at all. I knew that it simply couldn't have been any one else but the young man whom I've mentioned as being in love with Consuelo. He must have seen Consuelo and I steal away into the garden, and followed us down to the summer-house, and sat there in the shrubbery under the window, listening to every word we said and calmly smoking his cigar—that priceless cigar! And then, when he heard the steps on the gravel path he had the wit to know that the climatic conditions in the summer-house were about to become unsettled—and, on a noble impulse, did what he did, and then faded away. I didn't see him in the morning, as I left by the earliest train. What could one say, anyway? He was a cad, and a gentleman, that's all."
We had turned into Clarges Street, and were almost at my door. As he finished I took his arm.
"You are wrong about his being a cad," I said, "because he didn't follow you two out to the summer-house at all. He was there a good five minutes before you—not in the summer-house but just behind it, for, poor fool, he was trying to choose the most perfect lilac bloom for the most beautiful and imperfect lady in the world. And when she suddenly turned up with the horrible young man who had been drifting round her all day—well, he just sat down on the ground under the window, cursed life and cursed women, and smoked his cigar. I didn't stay to listen, I was too angry to move, that's all. You see, she had given me an appointment to meet her in the summer-house at ten o'clock that night...."
We were at my door. He smiled, a little self-consciously, through the short silence.
"You will please forgive me," he said, almost nervously. "And for more than accusing you falsely, or for boring you with the yarn at all. For I certainly wouldn't have told it to you so, well, intimately, if, up in the Hallidays' drawing-room I hadn't half recognised you. Very dimly, of course.... One's memory plays one queer tricks sometimes, doesn't it? To retain, however dimly, and vaguely, a face seen twenty years ago! And so I followed you out.... So Consuelo had told you to meet her at the summer-house that night!
"I can almost understand now," he said slowly, "how she died as she did. Life on those lines must have got too complicated.