‘You don’t suppose that, because I love her, I shouldn’t like to see her happy?—I’m not such a beast!—I’d sooner see her happy than anything else in all the world.’
‘I see.—Even happy with another?—I’m afraid that my philosophy is not like yours. If I loved Miss Lindon, and she loved, say, Jones, I’m afraid I shouldn’t feel like that towards Jones at all.’
‘What would you feel like?’
‘Murder.—Percy, you come home with me,—we’ve begun the night together, let’s end it together,—and I’ll show you one of the finest notions for committing murder on a scale of real magnificence you ever dreamed of. I should like to make use of it to show my feelings towards the supposititious Jones,—he’d know what I felt for him when once he had been introduced to it.’
Percy went with me without a word. He had not had much to drink, but it had been too much for him, and he was in a condition of maundering sentimentality. I got him into a cab. We dashed along Piccadilly.
He was silent, and sat looking in front of him with an air of vacuous sullenness which ill-became his cast of countenance. I bade the cabman pass though Lowndes Square. As we passed the Apostle’s I pulled him up. I pointed out the place to Woodville.
‘You see, Percy, that’s Lessingham’s house!—that’s the house of the man who went away with Marjorie!’
‘Yes.’ Words came from him slowly, with a quite unnecessary stress on each. ‘Because he made a speech.—I’d like to make a speech.—One day I’ll make a speech.’
‘Because he made a speech,—only that, and nothing more! When a man speaks with an Apostle’s tongue, he can witch any woman in the land.—Hallo, who’s that?—Lessingham, is that you?’
I saw, or thought I saw, someone, or something, glide up the steps, and withdraw into the shadow of the doorway, as if unwilling to be seen. When I hailed no one answered. I called again.