He came quickly forward from the fire-place and touched his way to a table behind our chairs. Though his back was turned, I could see out of the corner of one eye that he was furtively wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.
"If by any chance they don't want a divorce, will you insist on it?" I went on unsparingly.
"Of course not. Provided they separate. You don't imagine——"
"If they do? If your wife asks you to forgive her and have her back?"
O'Rane had never smoked, I have been told, since his blindness; he could no longer taste the tobacco nor keep it alight. I observed him now putting a cigar in his mouth and chewing the end.
"It's not very likely to arise," he said.
"But if it did?"
"I'll wait till it arises."
He came back to his old place on the hearth-rug, and we remained silent until the clock struck half-past ten. At the sound I could see the others growing tense and expectant, as I was doing. O'Rane had been whistling through his teeth, but he abandoned even this distraction. For myself, uncomfortable as I knew us all to be, I could not help thinking that Mrs. O'Rane and Grayle could be hardly free from all feelings of embarrassment. To return to the house, which had been given as a wedding present sixteen months before, accompanied by the lover with whom she had left it, to meet her husband and discuss how he proposed to deal with her infidelity—the bare bones were enough without clothing them in imagination. I pictured Mrs. O'Rane giving the familiar directions to the driver, tapping on the window when he lost himself in trying to take short cuts through the streets of Westminster, stopping him at the door and being helped out by Grayle.... And Grayle, for all his seasoning, had never, I was very sure, been led by the wife into her husband's house and presence....
I scribbled on an envelope and handed it to George: