here's the libel law, as of course
you know; newspapers are as a rule rather careful about that. No
respectable paper, I needn't say, would care to use such copy as this
of yours.... Well, good night.... Oh, by the way, I suppose your brother
told you all that?"

Hilary said, "I had it from various reliable sources." He stood
uncertain, with wavering eyes, despair killing hope. "You will do
nothing at all to save your reputation, then?"

Urquhart laughed, unamused, with hard eyes. He was intensely irritated.

"Do you think it likely? I don't care what you get printed in any dirty
rag about me, man. Why on earth should I?"

The gulf between them yawned; it was unbridgeable. From Hilary's world
insults might be shrieked and howled, dirt thrown with all the strength
of hate, and neither shrieks nor dirt would reach across the gulf to
Urquhart's. They simply didn't matter. Hilary, realising this, grew
slowly, dully red, with the bitterness of mortified expectation.
Urquhart's look at him, supercilious, contemptuous, aloof, slightly
disgusted, hurt his vanity. He caught at the only weapon he had which
could hurt back.

"I must go and tell Peter, then, that his information has been of no
use."

Urquhart said merely, "Peter won't be surprised. It's no good your trying
to make me think that Peter is joining in this absurdity. He has too much
sense of the ridiculous. He seems to have talked to you pretty freely of
my concerns, which I certainly fancied he would keep to himself; I
suppose he did that by way of providing entertaining conversation; Peter
was always a chatterbox"--it was as well that Peter was not there to hear
the edge in the soft, indifferent voice--"but he isn't quite such a fool
as to have countenanced this rather stagey proceeding of yours. He knows
me--used to know me--pretty well, you see.... Good night. You have plenty
of time to catch your train, I think."

Hilary stopped to say, "Is that all you have to say? You won't let your
connexion with our family--with Peter--induce you to help us in our
need?... I've done an unpleasant thing to-night, you know; I've put
my pride in my pocket and stooped to the methods of the cad, for the sake
of my wife and little children. I admit I have made a mistake, both of
taste and judgment; I have behaved unworthily; you may say like a fool.
But are you prepared to see us go under--to drive by and leave us lying
in the road, as you did to that old Tuscan peasant? Doe