He sprang up and walked about the room. Presently he stopped in front of the statuette of the “Danseuse de Tunisie.”
“Is it the woman that does it all, or the fan?” he said. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s one, and sometimes the other. Without the fan there’s purity, what’s meant from the beginning—”
“By whom?” said Robin. “I thought you were an atheist?”
“Oh, God! I don’t know what I am.”
He turned away from the statuette.
“With the fan there’s so much more than purity, than what was meant to complete us—as devils—men. But—mothers don’t carry the fan. And I’m going North to-night.”
“Do you mean to say that Lady Holme—?”
Robin’s voice was stern.
“Why did she say that to me?”
“What did she say?”