you came here this morning? Do me
justice. Am I not going as far as a man can go when I say that I blot
out of my memory the cursed evenings you and I spent together in cursed
talk? That doesn't cover the ground, you think; but would any other form
of words cover it any better? Would you believe me the more, whatever
set of speeches I might adopt? Would you not always have in the back of
your mind your expressive English phrase, that I was lying like a
gentleman? You know best what you can do, as I know best what I can do;
but is it not true that we have arrived at a point where the less that
is spoken in words on either side, the better it will be for us all?"

When he had finished, Bienville turned again toward the window, leaning
his head wearily against the frame. Derek stood a minute longer watching
him. Then, as if accepting the assertion that there was nothing more
that could be said, he went quietly, with bent head, from the room.

* * * * *

He was down in the street before he became fully conscious that, among
the confused, strangled cries of pain within him, that which was loudest
and most imploring was a wailing self-reproach. It was a self-reproach
with a strain of pleading in it, akin to that with which a mother blames
herself for the failings of her son, seizing on any one else's wrong to
palliate the guilt of the accused. He had injured Diane himself! He had
pried into her past, and laid bare her sins, and stripped her life of
that covering of secrecy which no human existence could do without,
least of all his own.

He walked on with bowed head, his eyes blind to the May sunshine, his
ears deaf to the city's joyous, energetic uproar, his mind closed to the
fact that important business affairs were awaiting his attention. His
feet strayed toward Gramercy Park, directed not so much by volition as
by the primary man-instinct to be near some sweet, sympathetic woman in
the hour of pain. Lucilla and he had, grown up in one family as boy and
girl together, and there were moments when he found near her the peace
he could get nowhere else in the world.

He pushed by the footman who admitted him and walked straight to the
room where Lucilla was generally to be found. Though he could scarcely
be surprised to see Diane sitting by her, he stopped on the threshold,
with signs of embarrassment, and made as though he would withdraw.
Overwhelmed by the responsibilities of such a moment