"There's a breeze over here," said Alston, and they took chairs by the window. For a minute Jeffrey looked out over the low-lying scene. He drew a quick breath. This was the first time he had overlooked the old playground since he had left Addington for his grown-up life. "We used to sail the old scow down there," he said. "Remember?" Choate nodded. "She's down there now in one of the yards, filled with red geraniums." They sat for a while in the silence of men who find it unexpectedly restful to be together and need not even say so. Yet they were not here at all. They were boys of Addington, trotting along side by side in the inherited games of Addington. Alston offered Jeffrey a smoke, and Jeff refused it. "See here," said he, "what's Madame Beattie up to?" Choate turned a startled glance on him. He did not see how Jeffrey, a stranger in his wife's house, should know anything at all was up. "She's been making things rather lively," he owned. "Who told you?" "Told me? I was in it, at the beginning. She and I drove out by chance, to hear Moore doing his stunt in the circus-ground. That began it. But now, it seems, she's got some devil's influence over Moore's gang. She's told 'em something queer about me." "She's told 'em something that makes things infernally uncomfortable for other people," said Choate bluntly. "Did you know she had squads of them--Italians, Poles, Abyssinians, for all I know, playing on dulcimers--she's had them come up at night and visit her in her bedroom. They jabber and hoot and smoke, I believe. She's established an informal club--in that house." Alston's irritation was extreme. It was true Addington to refer to foreign tongues as jabber, and "that house", Jeffrey saw, was a stiff paraphrase for Esther's dwelling-place. He perceived here the same angry partisanship Reardon had betrayed. This was the jealous fire kindled invariably in men at Esther's name. "How do you know?" he asked. Alston hesitated. He looked, not abashed, but worried, as if he did not see precisely the road of good manners in giving a man more news about his wife than the man was able to get by himself. "Did Esther tell you?" Jeff inquired. "Yes. She told me." "When?" "Several times. She has been very uncomfortable. She has needed counsel."