That first vivid impression past, the idea had made itself familiar to him.  He had become composed enough to see such difficulties as it involved, and such consequences as it implied.  These had fretted him with a passing trouble; for these he plainly discerned.  As for the cruelty and the treachery of the thing he meditated doing—­that consideration never crossed the limits of his mental view.  His position toward the man whose life he had preserved was the position of a dog.  The “noble animal” who has saved you or me from drowning will fly at your throat or mine, under certain conditions, ten minutes afterward.  Add to the dog’s unreasoning instinct the calculating cunning of a man; suppose yourself to be in a position to say of some trifling thing, “Curious! at such and such a time I happened to pick up such and such an object; and now it turns out to be of some use to me!”—­and there you have an index to the state of Geoffrey’s feeling toward his friend when he recalled the past or when he contemplated the future.  When Arnold had spoken to him at the critical moment, Arnold had violently irritated him; and that was all.

The same impenetrable insensibility, the same primitively natural condition of the moral being, prevented him from being troubled by the slightest sense of pity for Anne.  “She’s out of my way!” was his first thought.  “She’s provided for, without any trouble to Me!” was his second.  He was not in the least uneasy about her.  Not the slightest doubt crossed his mind that, when once she had realized her own situation, when once she saw herself placed between the two alternatives of facing her own ruin or of claiming Arnold as a last resource, she would claim Arnold.  She would do it as a matter of course; because he would have done it in her place.

But he wanted it over.  He was wild, as he paced round and round the walnut-tree, to hurry on the crisis and be done with it.  Give me my freedom to go to the other woman, and to train for the foot-race—­that’s what I want. They injured?  Confusion to them both!  It’s I who am injured by them.  They are the worst enemies I have!  They stand in my way.

How to be rid of them?  There was the difficulty.  He had made up his mind to be rid of them that day.  How was he to begin?

There was no picking a quarrel with Arnold, and so beginning with him. This course of proceeding, in Arnold’s position toward Blanche, would lead to a scandal at the outset—­a scandal which would stand in the way of his making the right impression on Mrs. Glenarm.  The woman—­lonely and friendless, with her sex and her position both against her if she tried to make a scandal of it—­the woman was the one to begin with.  Settle it at once and forever with Anne; and leave Arnold to hear of it and deal with it, sooner or later, no matter which.

How was he to break it to her before the day was out?