Half-way through November O'Rane returned to London for the mid-term Leave Out. I was apprised of his arrival by a telephone message begging me to cancel any other engagements and dine with him informally at "The Sanctuary."
It was Saturday night, and I stayed in London to meet him. George and Bertrand were his other guests, and we dined at one end of the long refectory table on the dais, with the rest of the room lit up only by the flicker of the two fires, which sent shapeless, indeterminate shadows dancing up and down the panelled walls. It is usually as easy to detect when a woman lives in a house as when a house has been unoccupied for months. The library was perhaps tidier than Mrs. O'Rane used to leave it; otherwise it was unchanged, but it had become indefinably masculine. O'Rane was as quiet and self-possessed as I had always found him, but now without the noticeable effort which I had observed at our last two or three meetings. As might be expected, we talked throughout dinner of the war and of political changes in the House of Commons. Only when we were gathered round one fire with our coffee and cigars did he turn the conversation on to himself.
"I must apologise for spoiling your week-end," he said, addressing himself to me, "I had to take the opportunity of seeing you when I could. All three of you have been amazingly kind and amazingly discreet and sympathetic. It's—my funeral, of course, but I wanted you to be present. George, perhaps you're the best person——"
There was a silence of some moments, while George turned his cigar round in his mouth and stared at his boots.
"I only know what you asked me to do, Raney," he began diffidently. And then to us, "O'Rane told me to fix up a meeting with Sonia. I went round to Milford Square last night and told her that he wanted to—discuss the future, I think I said. Grayle was present. She said she'd come, if he came with her; and I arranged for half-past ten to-night."
He stopped with obvious relief. O'Rane was standing with his back to the fire, rocking gently from heel to toe, with his hands in his trouser pockets. I saw him put his watch to his ear, touch the repeater and smile.
"It's not ten yet," he said to Bertrand and me. "If you'd rather be out of it.... I got George to attend as my second and I wanted you two to be—well, to hear what we said and keep us cool. I've been thinking over this business pretty steadily for some months and I feel it can't go on. My idea about marriage—well, to begin with, people mustn't marry unless they feel they can't get on without each other.... If they find they've made a hopeless mistake, nothing to my way of thinking justifies spoiling two lives by keeping them coupled together. Sonia knows that, I've always told her so.... Well, no one could find anything to say for our present position, it's neither one thing nor the other. If Sonia's made her choice——"
He broke off and shrugged his shoulders. Bertrand turned his eyes away from the boy's face and gazed slowly round the long, warm, softly-lighted room. George had discovered a spot of grease on the sleeve of his uniform and was industriously scraping it with the end of a wooden match.
"Go on, O'Rane," I said as gently as I could. "We haven't got much time. She's coming here, and you're going to ask her what she means to do."
He nodded almost gratefully.