The fingers dropped from my arm. “Hell!” he muttered. “Oh, hell! What?” He hadn’t the faintest idea of what he was saying. I wished to God he had, I didn’t want to listen to him, I hated listening to him, it was like spying on the man. Spying on Tristram wandering in the forest raving with love for Yseult. But what could I do? How leave him like this? How let him return to Venice like this? Good Lord, and Venice waiting in the taxi! If she saw him like this.... Good Lord, was the man mad to have brought Venice with him! Here, to see Iris! The misty impulses of a man of honour ... do nothing behind his wife’s back. After, you know, having done everything. But ... Good Lord, if Venice grew tired of waiting in the taxi and came and found Napier like this, like a demented knight in a story! Venice of the lion’s cub head, the mischievous, loyal eyes, dear Venice! adoring and adorable Venice! Napier’s wife.... And, at that moment, I saw Venice again at the Loyalty, that night ten months ago, happily waiting for Napier, whose wife she would be in three days. “Darling, darling, _darling_!” That night of Gerald’s death! And then for the first time I remembered the cry of “Iris!” in the night, and the two red rear-lights swerving into South Audley Street, and I understood how it was that Iris in her letter had called me her “destroyer” ... her “destroyer” with love, for no lover could have passed her way that night had I told her about Gerald. And Napier had passed her way, Napier whom she had seen that night for the first time in many years, Napier her ancient friend. “There were two roads leading from a certain tree....” And the two roads had come together in the darkness of that night, in the darkness of cruelly blind chance, and now they had come together again in the darkness of this night, while Venice waited outside.... I couldn’t, you can see, not do anything just then. I couldn’t let this love-lost man be found by Venice in her husband’s shoes. Napier and Venice, the happy lovers.... I was on Venice’s side. For Venice! Always, I was for Venice. One likes so few people, but one likes those few very, very much. This love-lost man must be woken up, must _behave_. Of course he must behave! Venice, for Venice! How dared he have done this to Venice? Marrying her on the third day from that night.... I asked him where he was staying, and when he said “the Meurice,” I told him that if he would go now I could ring him up when I had seen the doctor. “It’s no good waiting here,” I said. “I know the doctor.” He stared at me with the immense, the devastating, dignity of the utterly careless. I bitterly wanted to wake him up, to make him see the thing he had done, the beastly thing. For Venice! “It’s no good,” I said cruelly, “keeping Venice waiting for ever....” He scowled at me, or at something just behind my shoulder. “I’m going to see Iris,” he said.