Late that night O'Rane sat on the foot of my bed detailing his last interview. I told him things that nobody but he would need to be told—that he had only himself to thank for his dismissal, that a spoiled and petted semi-professional beauty was not a good medium for his unduly direct methods and that he could congratulate himself on driving Sonia three-fourths against her will into Crabtree's arms—in the very terms of the warning I had given him at Lake House.
"You see, I don't want to marry a professional beauty," he objected.
"Then take Sonia at her word and don't meet her again," I said.
"But that's only one side of her, the artificial side, the London hothouse side. Before all this, when she was a child of twelve and I lived in a misery of spirit that would drive some men to suicide.... In those days Sonia—Bah! she's ashamed of it now, but she showed me the whole of her brave, tender, generous soul—I said, and I say still, that there's hope of salvation for the damned if he comes before the Judgement Seat and boasts that once, even for a moment——"
His voice rose and grew rich with the familiar Irish rhetoric till I begged him to remember the slumbering household.
"There are so many Sonia Daintons," he mused, "but that's the one I always see. It's the one I shall see for the next three years." He uncurled his legs and slid down from the bed. "I sail next week, George. Dine with me on Thursday to say good-bye."
"No, you dine with me."
"I asked you first—my last favour on English soil: I'll dine the night I get back."
"That's a little vague," I complained. "You may be gone ten years."