“Oh, don’t apologize,” said Lawrence laughing.  His manner bewildered Val, who could make nothing of it except that it was incompatible with any sense of guilt.

“But, then,” the question broke from Val involuntarily, “why did you stay?”

“Why do you?”

“I?”

“Yes, you.  Did it never strike you that I might retort with a tu quoque?”

“How on earth—?”

“You were perhaps a little preoccupied,” said Lawrence with his deadly smile.  “I suggest, Val, that whether Clowes was jealous or not—­you were.”

“I?”

“Yes, my dear fellow:”  the Jew laughed:  it gave him precisely the same satisfaction to violate Val’s reticence, as it might have given one of his ancestors to cut Christian flesh to ribbons in the markets of the East:  “and who’s to blame you?  Thrown so much into the society of a very pretty and very unhappy woman, what more natural than for you to—­how shall I put it?—­constitute yourself her protector?  Set your mind at rest.  You have only one rival, Val—­her husband.”

He enjoyed his triumph for a few moments, during which Stafford was slowly taking account with himself.

“I’m not such a cautious moralist as you are,” Lawrence pursued, “and so I don’t hold a pistol to your head and give you ten minutes to clear out of Wanhope, as you did to mine.  On the contrary, I hope you’ll long continue to act as Bernard’s agent.  I’m sure he’ll never get a better one.  As for Laura, she won’t discover your passion unless you proclaim it, which I’m sure you’ll never do.  She looks on you as a brother—­an affectionate younger brother invaluable for running errands.  And you’ll continue to fetch and carry, enduring all things from her and Bernard much as you do from me.  When I do go—­which won’t be just yet—­I shan’t feel the faintest compunction about leaving you behind.  I’m sure Bernard’s honour will be as safe in your hands as it is in mine.”

And thus one paved the way to pleasant relations with ones brother-in-law.  The civilized second self, always a dismayed and cynical spectator of Hyde’s lapses into savagery, raised its voice in vain.

“You seem a little confused, Val—­you always were a modest chap.  But surely you of all men can trust my discretion—?”

“That’s enough,” said Val.  He touched Hyde’s coat with his finger-tips, an airy movement, almost a caress, which seemed to come from a long way off.  “Lawrence, you’re hurting yourself more than me.”

It was enough and more than enough:  an arrest instant and final.  Later Lawrence wondered whether Val knew what he had done, or whether it was only a thought unconsciously made visible; it was so unlike all he had seen of Val, so like much that he had felt.

It put him to silence.  Not only so, but it flung a light cloud of mystery over what had seemed noonday clear.  Since that first night when he had watched in a mirror the disentangling of Laura’s scarf, Lawrence had entertained no doubt of Val’s sentiments, but now he was left uncertain.  Val had translated himself into a country to which Lawrence could not follow him, and the light of an unknown sun was on his way.