“I’m so glad you confess, at last, not to seeing everything,” said I.

I was fearing this physical reaction in Sir Anthony.  It was only the self-assertion of Nature.  He had gone splendidly through his ordeal, having braced himself up for it.  He had not braced himself up, however, sufficiently to go through the other and far longer ordeal of hiding his secret from his wife.  So of course he went to pieces.

After Cliffe had left me, with his desire for information unsatisfied, I rang up Wellings Park.  It was the Sunday morning after the reception.  To my surprise, Sir Anthony answered me; for he was an old-fashioned country churchgoer and plague, pestilence, famine, battle, murder and sudden death had never been known to keep him out of his accustomed pew on Sunday morning.  Edith, he informed me, had gone to church; he himself, being as nervous as a cat, had funked it; he was afraid lest he might get up in the middle of the sermon and curse the Vicar.

“If that’s so,” said I, “come round here and talk sense.  I’ve something important to say to you.”

He agreed and shortly afterwards he arrived.  I was shocked to see him.  His ruddy face had yellowed and the firm flesh had loosened and sagged.  I had never noticed that his stubbly hair was so grey.  He could scarcely sit still on the chair by my bedside.

I told him of Cliffe’s suspicions.  We were a pair of conspirators with unavowable things on our minds which were driving us to nervous catastrophe.  Edith, said I, was more suspicious even than Cliffe.  I also told him of our talk about the projected dinner party.

“That,” he declared, “would drive me stark, staring mad.”

“So will continuing to hide the truth from Edith,” said I.  “How do you suppose you can carry on like this?”

He grew angry.  How could he tell Edith?  How could he make her understand his reason for welcoming Boyce?  How could he prevent her from blazing the truth abroad and crying aloud for vengeance?  What kind of a fool’s counsel was I giving him?

I let him talk, until, tired with reiteration, he had nothing more to say.  Then I made him listen to me while I expounded that which was familiar to his obstinate mind—­namely, the heroic qualities of his own wife.

“It comes to this,” said I, by way of peroration, “that you’re afraid of Edith letting you down, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

At that he flared out again.  How dared I, he asked, eating his words, suggest that he did not trust the most splendid woman God had ever made?  Didn’t I see that he was only trying to shield her from knowledge that might kill her?  I retorted by pointing out that worry over his insane behaviour—­please remember that above our deep unchangeable mutual affection, a violent surface quarrel was raging—­would more surely and swiftly kill her than unhappy knowledge.  Her quick brain—­had already connected Gedge, Boyce, and his present condition as the main factors of some strange problem.  “Her quick brain!” I cried.  “A half idiot child would have put things together.”