They talked long and earnestly. At length, Huckaby having ransacked his memory of things past, they fixed as a probable date the day of the hostless dinner. Quixtus had sent down word that he was ill. The excuse was entirely false. Nothing but severe mental trouble could have stood in the way of his taking the head of the table. Obviously something had happened. Huckaby had a vague memory of seeing Quixtus, as he entered the museum, crush a letter in his hand and stuff it in his jacket pocket. It might possibly have been a letter incriminating the pair.
Whether the conjecture was right or wrong did not greatly matter. Clementina felt now that she held the key to Quixtus’s mad conduct. Blow after blow had fallen on him. Those whom he had trusted had betrayed him. He had lost faith in humanity. The gentle nature could not withstand this loss of faith. There had been shock. He had set out to work devildom. The pity of it!
She uttered a queer, choking laugh. “And not one piece of wickedness could he commit!”
The summer twilight began to creep over the quiet street, and the darkness deepened at the back of the room. A long silence fell upon them. Clementina sat as motionless as a dusky sphinx, absorbed by strange thoughts and wrung by strange emotions that made her bosom heave and her breath come quickly. A scheme, audacious, fantastic, romantic, began to shape itself in her mind, sending the blood tingling down to her feet, to her finger-tips.
At last she made an abrupt movement.
“It’s getting dark. What can the time be? I must go home.”
She rose.
“Before I go,” she said, “we must settle up about Mrs. Fontaine.”
“I suppose we must,” groaned Huckaby. “All I ask you is to spare her as much as you can.”
“We must think first of Quixtus,” she replied, shortly. “What we’ve got to do for him is to build up his faith in humanity again—not to give the little he has left another knockdown blow. See?”