his friendship with Lady Thiselton, its very strangeness and
originality pleased him. His relation to that charming woman was, he
felt, both indefinable and incredible; and his relation to the man
beside him, though less odd, could be included neither in the category
of acquaintanceship nor in that of friendship. Morgan was ignorant of
Ingram's personal life, even as Ingram was ignorant of such a large
fact in his own as Lady Thiselton. Their coming together had been
always on the ground of their one common interest; otherwise there was
the most absolute mutual exclusiveness between their existences.
True that Morgan's periodical appearance at this Albert Gate flat, of
which Ingram had made for himself a luxurious bachelor's home, had
eventually resulted in a certain frankness of speech and familiarity
of manner between them. But here their intercourse began and ended.

Perhaps Morgan had all along seen the position a little bit out of
perspective; the very freedom with which Ingram had come to unmask
himself before him and the intimacy with which they addressed each
other had perhaps misled him. The cheery breeziness of Ingram had
attracted him a good deal from the first, and he had liked the man for
the ready good nature he had displayed towards him. And altogether it
had been easy for him to think that he had done more than just rub up
against the surface of Ingram's life, the depth and fullness of which
he had scarcely realised.

At the beginning he had looked upon his being allowed to come and see
the older man now and again as a privilege. It had never struck him to
look at these visits of his from the other's point of view. It was
precisely this point of view that now forced itself upon him as he
struggled with the suspicion that had come to him. Had Ingram looked
upon him merely as somebody who deserved to be good-humouredly
tolerated? And was his openness only due to the consciousness of his
(Morgan's) being an outsider, into whose ears he had got into the
habit of speaking thoughts he would have told to no other living
person, pretty much as he might have written them in a diary? Such a
habit was easy to acquire with regard to an outsider whom one came
into contact with periodically, and with whom one had a long talk
each time.

He was not pleased, however, that such a train of thought should have
come to him, and, urged by something akin to remorse, his mind went
travelling back over the past five years i