"You're getting quite eloquent." "If I am, it's because I feel what I say. I _like_ Geoffrey, and I'm damned sorry for him. I don't know which of the two I'm sorrier for--him or Terry. And especially after the letter I had from him last night.... He's going to put up the biggest fight he can on Terry's behalf, and if he can manage to enjoy himself at the same time, I for one am very glad.... Anyhow, here's the letter--you can read it if you'd care to. It may, of course, strike you as something absolutely diabolical and callous, but _I_ think it's rather pathetic." She read it slowly, and then deliberately tore it twice across and dropped the pieces on to the floor. "_That_," she said, with deadly quietness, "is what I think of it.... And now, if you've quite finished defending a man who's well able to defend himself, perhaps you'll tell me what's going to happen to Terry?" III When I look at those torn fragments now, I think how excruciating must have been the tension that made her do a thing so pointless and silly. I oughtn't of course to have shown her the letter at all. It merely infuriated her; she didn't and couldn't see in it what I have seen. I think I never realized fully before then what a difference the years had made in her, and how changed she was from those early days when she had been the charming and immensely popular girl-wife of the successful careerist. She was still good-looking, but there was a growing bitterness in her that was killing the charm, as her altered habits had already killed the popularity. People had admired her in a vague sort of way for sticking to her husband, and then after a time they had forgotten her. She never troubled about her old friends, and when she met them she gave (as she gave me) an impression of grim implacability. Implacable she was that night when she asked me what was going to happen to Terry. "When he learns how he's been duped and defrauded, how will he stand it? And what can he do? He won't win the action against Karelsky (Geoffrey's been frank enough to tell me that)--the action's merely to give Geoffrey a chance of amusing himself. After Terry's served his purpose in contributing to that noble end, what on earth is to happen to him?" Implacable.... I said quietly: "One thing at a time. It's no use looking so far ahead.... June's telling him to-day." "So I gathered." "She's discussed it with you, no doubt?" "She discusses nothing with me. She prefers her father as a confidant." Implacable again.... "Well, anyhow, we can only wait." "_Wait_? We've waited long enough.... Seven years--for the inevitable to happen.... I'm tired." "Of waiting?" "Of everything." And that, I saw at once, was the look in her face that no younger woman could easily have had--that look of being tired of everything.