[_For answer TANNER folds it, puts it in his pocket, rises and bows._] TANNER. I will bid you good-night. ROBERTS. Not until you have explained how you come to have my wife’s letter in your possession, and why you were so absorbed in it as not to hear me when I spoke. TANNER. Why should I answer when you have no right to ask me the question? ROBERTS. No right! Was she not my wife? TANNER. No. ROBERTS. How do you know that? TANNER. Again I decline to answer. ROBERTS. Did you know my wife? TANNER. You mean Mrs. Roberts? Yes. ROBERTS. You know the person to whom the letter is directed? TANNER. No. ROBERTS. Yet you will not explain? TANNER. I see no obligation to do so. ROBERTS. Was the letter sent you? TANNER. Presumably, or given. One does not steal letters. ROBERTS. Can you not understand how it is that I should feel I had the right to ask an explanation? TANNER. Well, to be frank, I cannot. In my code, which no doubt is peculiar, no one has rights over another, even when that other is living—when he is dead still less. That the woman who bore your name wrote a letter to a friend, of which you were ignorant, is a sufficient reason for me to desire to protect its contents now from your curiosity. [_TANNER gathers up his papers._] ROBERTS. Admitting that I have not the right, have you? If you have, how came you by it? TANNER. You forget that I answer only such of your questions as I choose to answer. I think we had better say good-night. [_He moves towards the door, right._] ROBERTS. Wait! You have convinced me that the question of rights is not one to raise now. May there not be other questions involved, of kindness, of consideration, of humanity? If I ask you, to give me easement of pain, ask it as one human being in distress cries out to another, what will you say then? TANNER. Merely that in this particular instance the justice of withholding is more important than the doubtful “kindness,” as you call it, of giving. [_ROBERTS turns away and bows his head, then sits down at the writing-table and tries to write. His distress is so genuine that for the first time TANNER shows an interest in him._] TANNER. This talk is becoming painful to us both. It had better be ended. You ask information which I cannot give. Let the matter end there. ROBERTS. Will you tell me your name? TANNER. I have no reason for not doing so. Horace Tanner. ROBERTS. [_Glancing at him as if the name were familiar._]