After that they were at it hammer and tongs, Christopher very polite and deferential to begin with, prefacing his reiteration of facts with a small, civil laugh, but gradually adopting the low, stubborn monotone of an unimaginative man who knows that he is right. Carey, who was wrong, and also knew it, became very angry and said, “Look here, d’you mean to tell me--” and then put forward long, involved and hypothetical cases and interrupted violently when Christopher tried to deal with them in reply. Bill Patch caught Nancy’s eye and did everything he could, but when an argument has once got beyond a certain stage it sometimes seems as though nothing short of those unspecified catastrophes known as “an act of God” could ever bring it to an end. All through the evening they went on, and Nancy’s efforts to change the conversation were utterly ignored, and Bill’s gallant attempts at funniness were met with a glare of contempt from Christopher and a disgusted ejaculation or two from his host. Nancy Fazackerly, however, never forgot that Bill had tried. Like so many people who have been very badly treated by fate, she was touchingly grateful when she met with kindness. She knew that Bill Patch was preoccupied, as well he might be, with his own affairs, and that it was on her account that he had produced those intrinsically feeble, and entirely unsuccessful, jests and flippancies. And although Bill failed conspicuously in his object, Nancy’s gratitude went out to him. It was, no doubt, an unpleasant evening. Bill did not go out, as he usually did, and Mrs. Fazackerly could only presume that the Harter ménage was being left to the further discussion of their infelicitous relations. Her father and Christopher Ambrey continued to try and talk one another down, having long since forgotten the original point at issue, and at eleven o’clock Mrs. Fazackerly, in despair, went to bed. * * * * * All this I heard from Nancy, and she certainly made me visualize it clearly enough--the conversation with Bill Patch on the circular bench under the pink may tree, and the pity and affection that he inspired in her so strongly, despite the fact that, in her gentle judgment, he was altogether wrong. She saw him, theoretically, as a person who was undecided between right and wrong, but when he was actually there, talking to her, I believe that Nancy felt vaguely that his perplexity was not exactly of that sort. It was at once more subtle and less acute. She did not believe that he was either selfish, or sensual, or irreligious. “Even if he ran away with Mrs. Harter, I shouldn’t think him any of those things,” Mrs. Fazackerly told herself, but it rather amazed her to realize that, all the same. For all her superficial glibness in the art of fibbing, Nancy Fazackerly, as I have said before, is fundamentally sincere, and her view of Bill Patch has always interested me.