"It wouldn't be. It's just funny to her--just funny, do you hear? I've implored her, on my knees I've begged her just to help me to understand her, to give me some clue as to what it is that she really wants, to keep us from going to smash, and she just sat and listened to me with that slow grin of hers. . . . I frightened her, I think, the last time, and the grin faded from her face, but she became as hard as a stone. . . . She didn't care. She didn't care. And I think she wanted to break me. . . . She hasn't done it. Do you hear? She hasn't done it!" "Did you weep?" "I . . . I broke down." "Ah! Not a good way of convincing her of your capacity to give her what she wants." Basil strode angrily about the studio, waving his arms and shouting. "It's not a bit of good. It's done now. . . . It's all over. It's finished." "It won't be finished until you've done thinking about it. There doesn't seem to be much prospect of that." "I'm not going to discuss it with you." "I don't want to. What are the facts? You've accused her of infidelity. Who's the man?" "Fry. . . . His wife's divorcing him. That's evidence enough, isn't it?" "I'm not concerned with the evidence. I only want to know whether it's necessary that there should be a divorce." "She's left me." "I might persuade her to return." "Could you?" "I might. . . ." "I'll forgive her. . . . If she will come to me as a contrite woman. . . ." "That's slush. If you are going to spend your lives in quarrelling as to which is really the magnanimous party, I shan't stir a finger. . . . Do you want her?" "If she . . ." "If you want her, there can be no conditions. . . ." "But she . . ." Serge saw that it was hopeless. Basil was clinging to his grievances, nursing them, cherishing them. They had become more precious to him than his own happiness, than his wife, than the well-being of his children. . . . Still there was hope that on Minna's side there might be magnanimity and generosity enough to uproot the thick-set hedge with which Basil had surrounded himself. * * * Minna was in rooms in the Marylebone Road, near Madame Tussaud's. She had a woman friend with her, a queer inanimate creature who looked as though she had stepped out of the waxworks--a model of Nell Gwynne. Minna seemed quite happy. She was lying on a sofa eating Turkish delight and reading "Jane Eyre." She dropped her book as Serge entered and her friend glided away. "I _am_ glad to see you," she said. "It's so dull. Isn't it a beastly business?" "I've just been to see Basil." "Is he still weeping?" Serge ignored that question and asked her another. "What's the trouble between you two?" "Basil says I'm----" "I know that, but that's only the outcome of the trouble." Minna was interested. She sat up on the sofa with her hands between her knees. "How clever you are, Serge! No one else has ever thought of that. Everybody else is quarrelling as to whether I did or did not." "Did you?"