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‘You know very well what I mean, my dear,’ he replied. ‘What I told you–that night! You’ve tried to forget it. You’ve tried to look at me as though you had forgotten it. But you can’t do it. It’s on your mind. I’ve noticed it again and again. I noticed it at the theatre to-night. So I said to myself, “I’ll have it out with her.” And I’m having it out.’

‘My dear Ted, I assure you—-‘

‘No, you don’t,’ he stopped her. ‘I wish you did. Now you must just listen. I know exactly what sort of an idiot I was that night as well as you do. But I couldn’t help it. I was a fool to tell you. Still, I thought I was dying. I simply had a babbling fit. People are like that. You thought I was dying, too, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly, ‘for a minute or two.’

‘Ah! It was that minute or two that did it. Well, I let it out, the rotten little secret. I admit it wasn’t on the square, that bit of business. But, on the other hand, it wasn’t anything really bad–like cruelty to animals or ruining a girl. Of course, the chap was your father, but, but—-. Look here, May, you ought to be able to see that I was exactly the same man after I told you as I was before. You ought to be able to see that. My character wasn’t wrecked because I happened to split on myself, like an ass, about that affair. Mind you, I don’t blame you. You can’t help your feelings. But do you suppose there’s a single man on this blessed earth without a secret? I’m not going to grovel before gods or men. I’m not going to pretend I’m so frightfully sorry. I’m sorry in a way. But can’t you see—-‘

‘Don’t say any more, Ted,’ she begged him, fingering her sash. ‘I know all that. I know it all, and everything else you can say. Oh, my darling boy! do you think I would look down on you ever so little because of–what you told me? Who am I? I wouldn’t care twopence even if—-‘

‘But it’s between us all the same,’ he broke in. ‘You can’t get over it.’

‘Get over it!’ she repeated lamely.

‘Can you? Have you?’ He pinned her to a direct answer.

She did not flinch.

‘No,’ she said.

‘I thought you would have done,’ he remarked, half to himself. ‘I thought you would. I thought you were enough a woman of the world for that, May. It isn’t as if the confounded thing had made any real difference to your father. The old man died, and—-‘

‘Ted!’ she exclaimed, ‘I shall have to tell you, after all. It killed him.’

‘What killed him? He died of gastritis.’

‘He was ill with gastritis, but he died of suicide. It’s easy for a gastritis patient to commit suicide. And father did.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, ruin, despair! He’d been in difficulties for a long time. He said that selling those shares just one day too soon was the end of it. When he saw them going up day after day, it got on his mind. He said he knew he would never, never have any luck. And then …’

‘You kept it quiet.’ He was walking about the room.

‘Yes, that was pretty easy.’

‘And did your mother know?’

He turned and looked at her.

‘Yes, mother knew. It finished her. Oh, Ted!’ she burst out, ‘if you’d only telegraphed to him the next morning that the shares weren’t sold, things might have been quite different.’

‘You mean I killed your father–and your mother.’

‘No, I don’t,’ she cried passionately. ‘I tell you I don’t. You didn’t know. But I think of it all, sometimes. And that’s why–that’s why—-‘

She sat down again.

‘By God, May,’ he swore, ‘I’m frightfully sorry!’

‘I never meant to tell you,’ she said, composing herself. ‘But, there! things slip out. Good-night.’

She was gone, but in passing him she had timidly caressed his shoulder.