"I'm afraid that's the truth." "It must have been a dreadful tiff." "Oh, no." "What was it about?" "She objected to--to a certain attitude I had taken up. That was all. Nothing very dreadful." He said: "I suppose the reason you won't tell me is because the quarrel was about me. And I can guess what it was. She blamed you for persuading me to go away." I said nothing. "Didn't she? Wasn't that it?" "Well, if you insist on knowing, that _was_ it, more or less.... But what on earth's the good of diving back into things that happened so many years ago?" "We can't help it," he said, uneasily. "We haven't done with the past yet.... We can't push it away and say 'That's finished with.' It never is finished with." He paused and then went on: "And so she thought that it was _you_ who persuaded me?" "I didn't deny it." "But why didn't you? You _should_ have denied it. It was absurd for you to be blamed. You didn't persuade me at all--I made up my mind myself. It wasn't _your_ fault." "You thanked me in your letter for what I had said, anyhow." "Did I? Did I?" His eyes sharpened as if searching for something inside his own head. "I don't remember that letter. I only remember sitting up all night and making up my mind that I couldn't--I _couldn't_..." Some spasm of memory seemed to give him eagerness; he went on: "Don't you see why we _must_ help Severn? ... _I_ couldn't _then_--_he_ mustn't _now_--don't you _feel_ how it is? ... We _must_ help him--he's unhappy--he's been driven into all this by his unhappiness. It's not _his_ fault." At any rate, we had come back to the main argument. That was something. "I'm afraid," I said, "that you're in danger of flying to the other extreme about Severn. I believe, as you do, that he's fundamentally a decent fellow, but the fact remains that he's infernally clever and can lie beautifully whenever it suits him. It seems to me that it's hardly likely that the right's _all_ on his side. Most probably Helen has a case, if she were here to tell it." "Oh, I know ... it's not _her_ fault." "You say it's not her fault, and not Severn's fault either. Then whose fault do you suppose it is?" I was a fool to ask that question. It made him suddenly crumple up--made him lean forward with his head in his outstretched hands and yield himself up to desolate, hysterical sobbing. "_My_ fault," he cried, as soon as he had power to utter a word. "Not his--or hers either--but mine--_mine_--all _mine_...." VII And that, after seven years, was what he had been driven to....