At that I had no words for explanation or anything else: I could only repeat, 'Jane. Jane. Jane,' like a fool. She said, very low, 'Yes, Arthur,' as if she were assenting to some statement I had made, as perhaps she was. I somehow found that I had caught her hands in mine, and so we stood together, but still I said nothing but 'Jane,' because that was all that, for the moment, I knew. Hobart stood in the open doorway, looking at us, white and quiet. 'Good-evening,' he said. We fell apart, loosing each other's hands. 'You're early back, Oliver,' said Jane, composedly. 'Earlier, obviously,' he returned, 'than I was expected.' My anger, my hatred, my contempt for him and my own shame blazed in me together. I faced him, black and bitter, and he was not only to me Jane's husband, the suspicious, narrow-minded ass to whom she was tied, but, much more, the Potterite, the user of cant phrases, the ignorant player to the gallery of the Pinkerton press, the fool who had so little sense of his folly that he disputed on facts with the experts who wrote for the _Weekly Fact_. In him, at that moment, I saw all the Potterism of this dreadful world embodied, and should have liked to have struck it dead. 'What exactly,' I asked him, 'do you mean by that?' He smiled. Jane yawned. 'I'm going to take my things off,' she said, and went out of the room and up the next flight of stairs to her bedroom. It was her contemptuous way of indicating that the situation was, in fact, no situation at all, but merely a rather boring conversation. As, though I appreciated her attitude, I couldn't agree with her, I repeated my question. Hobart added to his smile a shrug. PART III: TOLD BY LEILA YORKE CHAPTER I THE TERRIBLE TRAGEDY ON THE STAIRS 1 Love and truth are the only things that count. I have often thought that they are like two rafts on the stormy sea of life, which otherwise would swamp and drown us struggling human beings. If we follow these two stars patiently, they will guide us at last into port. Love--the love of our kind--the undying love of a mother for her children--the love, so gloriously exhibited lately, of a soldier for his country--the eternal love between a man and a woman, which counts the world well lost--these are the clues through the wilderness. And Truth, the Truth which cries in the market-place with a loud voice and will not be hid, the Truth which sacrifices comfort, joy, even life itself, for the sake of a clear vision, the Truth which is far stranger than fiction--this is Love's very twin.