"What is he doing?"
"He gives no hint. It's about as much as he can stand—the agony of it—without trying to analyse it or think what he's going to do next. Did I tell you I went down there again? Well, I did—in spite of what he said. I've a convenient young cousin whose people are over in Ireland—Violet's brother, you met her at dinner with me at the Berkeley—and I can always legitimately go and see him. It was rather less of a success than my last visit. The first person I ran into was Lady Dainton, who asked me to shew her the way to Raney's quarters. She couldn't make it out, she said, that she'd written to Sonia about a concert at the hospital, written twice and had had no reply. Obviously she was away from home, but apparently it was nobody's business to forward letters." George smiled ruefully. "It was a hit for me, though she didn't know it. I send all letters to Raney, and Sonia's go in a special envelope marked 'For filing only'; it was a formula he and I agreed on, so that Miss Merryon could just chuck them into a box unopened.... I don't believe even she suspects, though it's bound to come out.... And she's in love with him, and that's supposed to sharpen a woman's intuition.... Well, I've no doubt Lady Dainton's letters were in the box with the rest, but that didn't bring her much nearer getting them answered. I felt I must really leave Raney to deal with her, so I said I'd promised to call on the Head and would come back later.... By the way, Burgess sees there's something up; he'd see there was something up if you built a brick-wall round it. When I went into his study, he looked at me for about five minutes, stroking his beard between his thumb and first finger. 'He is thine own familiar friend, whom thou lovest,' he began without any beating about the bush. 'I know the whole story, sir,' I said. 'If I thought for a week, I couldn't think of anything worse. If I may make a suggestion, sir, the kindest thing you can do is not to notice anything.' Burgess stroked his beard a bit more; then he said—'The adder is not more deaf.' But I'm prepared to bet he's made a very shrewd guess."
"Did you gather how O'Rane disposed of Lady Dainton?" I asked.
George shrugged his shoulders.
"He had to say that Sonia wasn't at 'The Sanctuary' and he had to admit that he didn't know her address at the moment. Fortunately, Lady Dainton is so ready to think ill of him and so very unready to think ill of her darling daughter that she never dreamed or suspected what had happened. I don't know whether she went further than thinking that Sonia was staying with friends and that Raney wasn't sufficiently interested in her to discover her whereabouts; perhaps she did, for she took the opportunity of saying that it was monstrous for him to desert his wife like this for three months at a time, but that, on her honour, he didn't deserve to have a wife, if she was to be condemned to the life he had led at Melton or in London. Raney was smiling to himself and saying nothing, when I came in, so she turned her batteries on to me. As a rule she frightens me into agreeing with anything she says, but this time I did pluck up courage to tell her that, in my opinion, when two people married, they must be left to work out their own salvation. There's a certain irony there, Stornaway,—I was conscious of it at the time—when you think of the way you and Bertrand and I laboured to keep their boat from capsizing. She didn't appreciate the irony, though; she only thought I was being rather rude. That didn't matter so long as I got rid of her."
He pushed away his plate, sighed and rose from the table.
"Did you have any talk with O'Rane?" I asked, as we went upstairs together.
"That depends on your definition of talk," he answered with a joyless smile. "We emitted words at each other. It—I don't mind telling you, Stornaway,—it hurt like sin to find that I couldn't get near him. I suppose it was a compliment to our friendship that he didn't try to cut jokes as he did when I dined with him in Common Room the last time, but it was an unfilling sort of compliment.... No, to offer him any kind of sympathy would have been to get myself pitched out of the room. I felt that. He was in a suit of mail.... I should have thought—but then I've not been through it and, please God! I never shall. It did hurt, though, because there hasn't been much that we've kept from each other all these years."
He laughed a little at his own sensibility. I thought for a moment and then told him of my meeting that day in Hyde Park. From behind their rimless glasses, his eyes were fixed unwaveringly on mine, and at the end he made no comment.