she told him about Adnor
Rodd and his bare room, where without any hope of an audience he wrote
his plays and lived in them more passionately than it was possible to
do in life.

Sir Henry shook his head.

'I don't mind betting,' he said, 'that he's got something wrong with
him. Either he drinks, or has an impossible wife, or he likes low
company, or-- No. There aren't such people.'

'But there are.' And she told him how she had spent a whole day with
Rodd and had gone home with him to see his rooms.

'Alone?' asked Sir Henry.

'Yes.'

'Then if you were my girl I should put you on bread and water for a
week.'

To convince him, she tried to tell him how she had struggled to
overcome Charles's objections to the practical use of his talent, and
had forced him to come to London.... In her eagerness and in her
happiness at having brought him to his senses, she lost sight of the
fact that she was revealing her own history. He brought her up sharp
with,--

'Are you married to Charles Mann?'

'Ye-es,' she said, her heart fluttering.

'I didn't know,' he replied nonchalantly. His manner towards her
changed. He was still soft and kind, and bland in his impish wit, but
beneath the surface he was brutal, revengeful, cruel, and she felt the
force of the ruthless egoism that had won him his position in spite of
disabilities which would have hampered and even checked a less forceful
man.... In the same moment she understood that what had been a
glorious and lovely reality to her had been a game to him; and that he
designed without the slightest compunction to turn both Charles and
herself to his own profit.... Well, she thought, he might try, but he
could not prevent either of them from making their reputations, and
neither would ever sink to the mechanical docility of London players.

Sir Henry lit a large cigar and moved over to the fire.

'What does Verschoyle think of it?'

She knew that he was insolently referring to her marriage with Charles,
but she turned the shaft by saying,--

'He is delighted with it all. He believes in Charles.'

'Hm.... Even the birds and fishes?'

'Who told you about that?'

'London doesn't let a good story die.'

'Verschoyle was present....'

'Oh!'

The situation was becoming unbearable. Sir Henry was as hard, as
satisfied, and as unconscionable as a successful company-promoter.
This sudden revelation of his egoism, his wariness to protect the ideal
which in his