The glaring light faded out of the man's eyes. His voice, which had been suave and oily, changed utterly. Ethel had wondered at his voice immediately she heard it. It was like that of some shopman selling silks--a fat voice. It had been difficult for her to believe that _this_ was Gilbert Lothian. Rita's great friend, the famous man, her father's favourite modern poet. But she heard a _voice_ now, a real, vibrant voice. "Too late?" he questioned. "Too late for _what_?" Ethel nodded sadly. "I see, Mr. Lothian," she said, "that you are already beginning to understand that you have to hear things that will distress you." Lothian bowed. As he did so, _something_ flashed out upon the great bloated mask his face had become. It was for a second only, but it was sweet and chivalrous. "And will you tell me then, Miss Harrison?" he said in a voice that was beginning to tremble violently. His whole body was beginning to shake, she saw. With one hand he was opening the button of his fur coat. He looked up at her with a perfectly white, perfectly composed, but dreadfully questioning face. Certainly his body _was_ shaking all over--it was as though little ripples were running up and down the flesh of it--but his face was a white mask of attention. "Oh, Mr. Lothian!" the girl cried, "I am so sorry. I am so very sorry for you. You couldn't help loving her perhaps, I am only a girl, I don't pretend to know. But you must be brave. Rita is married!" Puffed and crinkled lids fell over the staring eyes for a moment--as if automatic pressure had suddenly pushed them down. "_Married?_ Rita?" "Oh, she ought to have told you! It was cruel of her! She ought to have told you. But you have not written to her for two or three weeks--as far as I know. . . ." "_Married?_ Rita?" "Yes, this morning, and Mr. Podley gave her away. But I have a letter for you, Mr. Lothian. Rita asked me to post it. She gave it me in bed this morning, before I dressed her for her marriage. Of course she didn't know that you were going to be in town. I will give it to you now." She gave him the letter. His hands took it with a mechanical gesture, though he made a little bow of thanks. Underneath the heavy fur coat, the man's body was absolutely rippling up and down--it was horrible. The eyelids fell again. The voice became sleepy, childish almost. . . . "But _I_ have come to marry Rita!" Wog became indignant. "Mr. Lothian," she said, "you ought not to speak like that before me. How could you have married Rita. You _are_ married. Please don't even hint at such things." "How stupid you are, Wog," he said, as if he had known her for years; in much the same sort of voice that Rita would have said it. "My wife's dead, dead and buried. . . . I thought you would both have known. . . ." His trembling hands were opening the letter which Rita Wallace had left for him.