"Come, come, she poked her pretty nose into his office, no doubt, and probably he'd much rather she hadn't. I've experience of ladies in distress, Cyril. I am, in fact, as the Great Duke said of authors--when he was Chancellor of Oxford, you know--much exposed to them." "I didn't come here to discuss Hobart Gaynor." "I hope we sometimes do wiser things than we come to do--or what's the good of a talk? Let's discuss Hobart Gaynor in the light of--say--an ambassador, or a go-between. You're looking very formidable, Cyril. Did you often look at Mrs. Maxon like that? If so, I hope she'd done something really wicked. Because, if she hadn't, you did." For just that moment the note of rebuke and authority rang clear in his voice. The next, he was the friend, the counsellor, the diplomatist again. "Let Gaynor go to her with a message of peace. Bygones to be bygones, faults on both sides, a fresh start, and so on." Cyril Maxon had felt the rebuke; he bowed his head to it. But he fretted terribly. "I can't bring myself to speak to him about it." "Let me. She's your wife, you know. If she went wrong, mightn't you feel that some effort of yours would--well, have made the difference?" "What am I to tell him to say?" "Let me tell him what to say--you try to honour my draft when it's presented. Perhaps--God knows--we're fighting for her soul, Cyril, and we shall be asked how we've borne ourselves in the fight, shan't we?" Cyril Maxon was always ready to own that he might have been wrong--to own it to God or to God's representative; he hated owning it to a fellow-creature uninvested with prerogatives. Attlebury had skilfully shifted the venue and changed the tribunal. A man may be sure he is right as against his wife--or _vice versâ_. Who dares enter an unqualified 'Not Guilty' before High Heaven's Court? There some count in the indictment is sure to be well laid and well proven. "I think I know my faults," he said, in a complacent humility. Attlebury's smile became more jovial still. "O learned gentleman!" The disciple still held the natural man under control. Maxon smiled, if sourly. "I may have been exacting." "You may have been an ass," sprang to the clergyman's lips, but stayed unuttered. "Allowances, Cyril, allowances!" he murmured gently. "We all have to work through allowances." "Do as you like, Frank. I want the thing put straight. You know I do. I think I ought to have from her an expression of--well, of regret." "Won't coming back convey it?" Attlebury smiled. "In fact, rather forcibly?"