g and thinking
of what other people are going to think!"

"We sometimes have to think for two," said Uvo--just a little less
steadily, to my ear.

"You don't see that I'm absolutely desperate, mewed up with a man who
doesn't care a rap for me!"

"I should make him care."

"That shows all _you_ care!" she retorted, passionately.

And then I felt that he was standing over her; there was something in
the altered pose of the head near mine, something that took my eyes
from the moonlit hands, and again gave me as vivid a picture as though
the wall were down.

"It's no use going back on all that," said Uvo, and it was harder to
hear him now. "I don't want to say rotten things. You know well enough
what I feel. If I felt a bit less, it would be different. It's just
because we've been the kind of pals we have been ... my dear ... my
dear!... that we mustn't go and spoil it now."

The low voice trembled, but now hers was lower still, and I at least
lost most of her answer ... "if you really cared for me ... to take me
away from a man who never did!" That much I heard, and this: "But you're
no better! You don't know what it is to--care!"

That brought an outburst, but not from the man beside me. He might have
been turned into part of the Ionic pillar. It was Uvo who talked, and I
for one who listened without another thought of the infamy of listening.
I was not there to listen to anybody, but to keep an eye on Ricardo; my
further action depended on his; but from the first his presence had
blunted my own sense of our joint dishonour, and now the sense was
simply dead. I was there with the best motives. I had even begun
listening with the best motives, as it were with a watching brief for
the unhappy pair. But I forgot both my behaviour and its excuse while
Uvo Delavoye was delivering his fine soul; for fine it was, with one
great twist in it that came out even now, when I least expected it, and
to the last conceivable intent. It is the one part of all he said that I
do not blush to have overheard.

"Let us help each other; for God's sake don't let us drag each other
down! That's not quite what I mean. I know it sounds rotten. I wonder if
I dare tell you what I do mean? It's not we who would do the dragging,
don't you see? You know who it is, who's pulling at us both like the
very devil that he was in life!"

Uvo laughed shortly, and now his tone was a tone I knew too well.
"Nobody has stood up to him yet," he went on;