Lawford shook his head. ‘She hasn’t seen him: not—not apart. I haven’t told her.’ Mr Bethany tossed the hugger-mugger of pamphlets across the table. ‘Then, for simple sanity’s sake, don’t. Hide it; burn it; put the thing completely out of your mind. A friend! Who, where is this wonderful friend?’ ‘Not very far from Widderstone. He lives—practically alone.’ ‘And all that stumbling and muttering on the stairs?’ he leant forward almost threateningly. ‘There isn’t anybody here, Lawford?’ ‘Oh, no,’ said Lawford. ‘We are practically alone with this, you know,’ he pointed to the book, and smiled frankly, however faintly. Again Mr Bethany sank into a fixed yet uneasy reverie, and again shook himself and raised his eyes. ‘Well then,’ he said, in a voice all but morose in its fretfullness, ‘what I suggest is that first you keep quiet here; and next, that you write and get your wife back. You say you are better. I think you said she herself noticed a slight improvement. Isn’t it just exactly as I foresaw? And yet she’s gone! But that’s not our business. Get her back. And don’t for a single instant waste a thought on the other; not for a single instant, I implore you, Lawford. And in a week the whole thing will be no more than a dreary, preposterous dream.... You don’t _answer_ me!’ he cried impulsively. ‘But can one so easily forget a dream like this?’ ‘You don’t speak out, Lawford; you mean _she_ won’t.’ ‘It must at least seem to have been in part of my own seeking, or contriving; or at any rate—she said it—of my own hereditary or unconscious deserving.’ ‘She said that!’ Mr Bethany sat back. ‘I see, I see,’ he said. ‘I’m nothing but a fumbling old meddler. And there was I, not ten minutes ago, preaching for all I was worth on a text I knew nothing about. God bless me, Lawford, how long we take a-learning. I’ll say no more. But what an illusion. To think this—this—he laid a long lean hand at arm’s length flat upon the table towards his friend—‘to think this is our old jog-trot Arthur Lawford! From henceforth I throw you over, you old wolf in sheep’s wool. I wash my hands of you. And now where am I going to sleep?’ He covered up his age and weariness for an instant with a small crooked hand. Lawford took a deep breath. ‘You’re going, old friend, to sleep at home. And I—I’m going to give you my arm to the Vicarage gate. Here I am, immeasurably relieved, fitter than I’ve been since I was a dolt of a schoolboy. On my word of honour: I can’t say why, but I am. I don’t care _that_, vicar, honestly—puffed up with spiritual pride. If a man can’t sleep with pride for a bed-fellow, well, he’d better try elsewhere. It’s no good; I’m as stubborn as a mule; that’s at least a relic of the old Adam. I care no more,’ he raised his voice firmly and gravely—‘I don’t care a jot for solitude, not a jot for all the ghosts of all the catacombs!’