The meal was to all appearances like hundreds of others they three had had together. Old Mole sat at the head of the table, with Matilda on one side of him, Panoukian on the other, and he watched them. They did not watch him. They grinned at each other like happy children, and made absurd jokes and teased, and their most ordinary remarks seemed to have a secret and profound meaning for them. Sometimes they explained their references to Old Mole, and then it was always "We"--Panoukian said: "We," Matilda: "Arthur and I" . . . and beneath all their talk there seemed to be a game, but a game in all seriousness, of fitting their personalities together. Every now and then, when they were filled with a bubbling consciousness of their wealth, they would throw a scrap to Old Mole out of sheer lavishness and babyish generosity. But other thought for or of him they had obviously none. They were not embarrassed by his presence, nor, to his amazement, was he by theirs. Only he was distressed, when they threw him a scrap of their happiness, to find that he knew not what to do with it, and could only put it away for analysis. "I analyze and analyze," he thought, "and there are they with the true gold in their hands, hardly knowing it for precious metal." Oh, yes! They were in love, and they had no right to be in love, and it was his duty to put an end to it. But how? He could only say: "This woman is my wife. I forbid her to explore any region of life which I cannot enter. She has no entity apart from me; her personality can find no food except what I am able or choose to provide for her." That was impossible, for it was not true. More humanly he might say: "I can understand that you love each other. But I cannot condone the selfishness it has led you to, or the secrecy. . . ." There he stopped. There was no secrecy. They were disguising nothing. They did not tell him because their intimacy was, as yet, so preciously private an affair that it could not bear talking of; and he bowed to that and respected their reticence. Matilda went to tidy her hair and he was left alone with Panoukian. They could find nothing to say to each other. The minds of both were full of the woman. Without her they fell apart, each into his separate world. And Old Mole knew that the issue of the adventure lay with her, and he knew that Panoukian looked for no issue and was living blindly in the present. He felt sorry for Panoukian. The evening papers were thrust through the door. Panoukian fetched them and gave them to his host. The largest event of the day was the grave illness of Sir Robert Wherry. "Dear, dear," said Old Mole. "I shouldn't have thought he was human enough to be ill," said Panoukian. "It is ptomaine poisoning, set up by a surfeit of oysters." "There'll be a terrific funeral. He was the greatest of Harbottlers. He loved the public and his love was requited."