"Sonia wouldn't."
"Then I'm afraid she's got to accept this as her punishment."
"Hers?" he murmured.
I made no answer, but my mind went back to the luncheon at Crowley Court, when Roger Dainton sat with drooping mouth and troubled brown eyes, wondering if he had heard aright that his own daughter was likely to be divorced, waiting to wake up from the bad dream. And I remembered Lady Dainton. She had an adequate allowance of maternal feeling, I doubt not, but on that day she was less moved by Sonia's plight than by a sense of social failure, of a rare and delicate instrument broken—as if after twenty years' training the hand of the violinist was become paralysed.
"It's a bit one-sided, isn't it?" suggested O'Rane quietly.
I still said nothing. Grayle was being punished in the one part of him that I knew to be capable of feeling, but perhaps the punishment did not stop there. For all I could tell he might in time know a pang of desire to see his own child. O'Rane's black eyes were sunk low in their sockets.
"It's damnably all-embracing," I said.
He pushed his chair back and returned to the fire, where he threw himself on a sofa.
"D'you know where George is dining to-night?" he asked. "I want to talk to him.... I suppose you think me a great fool, Stornaway, for not seeing it before. I loved her so much, I love her so much still.... Anyone can manage a boat when the water's calm, it wouldn't have required much love just to live with Sonia while everything was sunny, but I was prepared to do so much more.... When I went down to Melton the night after she left me, I set my teeth and told myself that I must keep my head. I knew it wasn't a trifle, like a fit of bad temper, I knew it was a very big thing she'd done. And I haven't much use for the kind of man who blindly protests beforehand that he'll forgive his wife whatever she may do.... It isn't love, it isn't generosity; it's just dam' folly. But I did feel that my love for Sonia would be a poor, cold thing, if it only lasted while everything was going well, if it wasn't strong enough to live through a bad storm. You won't exactly have to strain yourself to imagine what it was like thinking of her with Grayle.... I don't know that I can explain, it's all the little things, the little personal touches that I missed—even without being able to see her. She was such fun, she always enjoyed life and got so much out of it; she made a story out of everything and she loved telling me everything she'd been doing and she knew I loved hearing about it. I missed that frightfully when I was alone at Melton, before she left me; I used to feel quite jealous when I thought of her going about with other people, being a success, when I wasn't there to hear about it afterwards. But I always knew that I should be with her again in a few months. Well, I felt that my love for her would be just like other people's love, if I didn't first of all mind like hell and then recognise that in spite of it all, in spite of it all.... You saw me trying to get her away from him—for her own sake; it honestly was; I tried to keep myself in the background. You know I always hoped she'd come back. But now...."
He drew his legs up under him and sat with his chin on his fists.