Nicky blushed in a violent distress. Even so, in the house of mourning, he would have blushed at some sudden, unsoftened reference to the deceased. "I didn't know," he said, "whether he had told you." "Why shouldn't he?" Poor Nicky, she had made him blunder, so upset was he by the spectacle of her desperate pluck. He really _was_ like a person calling after a bereavement. He had called on account of it, and yet it was the last thing he was going to talk about. He had come, not to condole, but to see if there was any way in which he could be of use. "Well," said Nicky, "he seemed to have kept it so carefully from all his friends----" "He told _you_----Why, you were there, weren't you?" It was as if she had said, "You were there--you saw him die." "Yes." Nicky's face expressed a tender relief. If she could talk about it----"But it was only at the last minute." "I wonder," said she, "why he didn't tell us." "Well, you know, I think it was because she--the lady----" He hesitated. He knew what would hurt most; and he shrank almost visibly from mentioning Her. "Yes--you've forgotten the lady." She smiled, and he took courage. "There it is. The lady, you see, isn't altogether a lady." "Oh, Nicky----" He did not look at her. He seemed to be a partaker in what he felt to be her suffering and Tanqueray's shame. "Has he known her long?" she said. "About two months." She was right then. It had been since that night. It had been her own doing. She had driven him to her. "Since he went to Hampstead then?" "Yes." "Who was she?" "His landlady's daughter, I think, or a niece. She waited on him and--she nursed him when he was ill." Jane drew in her breath with an almost audible sound. Nicky had sunk into his chair in his attitude of vicarious, shamefaced misery. It made her rally. "Nicky," she said, "why do you look like that? I don't think it's nice of you to sit there, giving him away by making gloomy faces, in a chair. Why shouldn't he marry his landlady's daughter if he likes? You ought to stand up for him and say she's charming. She is. She must be; or he wouldn't have done it." "He ought not to have done it." "But he has. It had to happen. Nothing else could have happened." "You think so? It seems to me the most unpredestined, the most horribly, fantastically fortuitous occurrence." "It was what he wanted. Wouldn't you have given him what he wanted?" "No," said Nicky, "not if it wasn't good for him." "Oh, Nicky, how do you know what's good for him? You're not George Tanqueray." "No. If I were I'd have----" He stopped. His passion, growing suddenly, recklessly, had brought him to the verge of the depth they were trying to avoid. "If you were," said she, with amazing gaiety, "you'd have married this lady who isn't a lady. And then where would you have been?" "Where indeed?" said Nicky bitterly.