Guy spoke for the first time, he murmured: “It was brave of you to come, Iris. I don’t know much about using words, but I think it was noble of you to come. I don’t know any other woman who would have even thought of accepting Maurice’s invitation. But we, your friends, have never compared you to other women. In some things to their disadvantage. We have always admired your pluck. But we have admired your candour and honesty even more. That is why this sickening business baffles us so. Maurice and I just thought it might be fair both to us and to you if we were to try to clear it up a little.” And then Guy snapped: “I’m damned if I want to hate you, Iris.” Iris broke the back of the ace of clubs and dropped it among the others on the green cloth, where it lay cruelly curled. “Steady, Iris, steady!” said Sir Maurice. And he tried with the black ebony paper-knife to straighten out the ace of clubs. And he smiled. But Iris looked at Guy, and she seemed very tall. “Iris,” Hilary said gently, “we loved you too much as a child not to be able to hate the woman who has gone out of her way to kill every memory of that child....” “That’s it, Iris,” Guy murmured, restrained, amiable. “You see, as a child and as a girl you were very much in our hearts. Much more than any other child and girl has ever been. I don’t know why. And in spite of all things you’ve done we’ve always ... well, we’ve always kept one side of us which was yours for the asking. I mean, Iris, we couldn’t believe in you as a ... well, as a decent woman, but we’ve just stayed fond of you. Even when we’ve had to hear your name being pitched about by vile women and ghastly cads. Until now. But now....” “A moment, Guy!” The clever, darting eyes, the neat figure, the iron-grey hair, waving just a little. He smiled. He waved the black ebony paper-knife at Iris as though she was a naughty girl. He knew Iris inside-out, did Sir Maurice. She wasn’t all bad, not she. Iris looked at him for the first time, and the clear untroubled look seemed now to be fixed stonily. I wondered if she was afraid. The General spoke quickly, brittle-bright: “Guy has just said, Iris, that we’ve known you all your life. But there’s more than that, much more. That’s why I wanted you to come here to-night. I wanted to show you us, Iris. This isn’t an ordinary elopement, Napier’s and yours. It’s a stab in the back----” “Maurice, am I stabbing you in the back by coming here?” “You were always a strange, unfrightened girl, Iris. But the stab in the back is made. It’s stabbing us, your people, in the back. Venice’s people aren’t in this as we are. But that isn’t what I want to tell you. Is it, Guy? And I’ve no intention of trying to beg Napier from you. I’m not even yet old enough to beg favours from a woman. No, it seems settled about you and Napier, as he told me this morning. And I tell you, Iris, it wasn’t my son who spoke to me this morning. It was an enchanted boy----”