"'Then,' I said, 'we can go away for a lovely holiday with my money. To-morrow, for instance....' You see I never did believe much in standing on one's dignity about money and honour, for money's a messy thing anyway. "But he was staring at me so differently, so pitiably almost, and with no smile anywhere to light his tired face, that I had to leave my holiday in the air, miserably wondering at him. "'If it was only that kind of mess!' he said at last simply, as though I would understand by that! "He wouldn't talk about anything to do with it through lunch, and I had to sit there with my heart screwed up for fear of what he was going to tell me now. Oh, I loved him so as he sat almost silently facing me, his thin face set so firmly that it looked drawn on that lovely paper you find in Kelmscott books; and his eyes, those so efficient eyes, now and then playing darkly with the sun through the large window behind me. "It was as we were leaving the table that he suddenly threw his bomb, which hasn't really yet finished exploding in me. He threw it with a sudden, quiet smile and a look over my shoulder. He threw it as though it were a marvellous joke. "'You very thoroughly let the rats in through that window that night, didn't you, Iris?' "And I stared at him confounded, while my fingers groped about the table for something to hold, to hold tightly.... And I suddenly saw red, a kind of blind anger tore at me to tear him: "'Then why didn't you kick him out? Why did you let him stay on and on? I thought he was foul and that he hated you, but you knew for certain all the time--and yet you've let him stay, like a weak fool!' And I felt like screaming out my detestation of the whole atmosphere about them, the silly childish darkness of it all.... "How shrill I must have been at that moment! But you see, all the half conscious fears of the past months had suddenly burst true and shaken me quite beyond myself. And now I was so wildly sick to realise his lassitude--and he looking silently down from his height at me, unmoved by my anger except to that faint, irritating smile. "'You knew he hated you, you knew he hated you,' I accused him trembling. "'But I didn't hate _him_,' he said mildly. 'I've loved Antony, you see.' IX "And then that long stifling afternoon, when he and I sat under the sunblinds of the library window and he told me from beginning to end the tale of himself and Antony. The sun in the garden to our feet, the gay and livid sunblind over our heads, and across the water the green and yellow openness of the Park--why, it was one of those afternoons that are sent to make all human and animate things seems like nonsense! And nothing in the world but Roger's clear, definite voice could have drawn so thick a line between us and its carelessness. For what he said had no contact with a day of sun, it was a tale for a winter's day with doors and windows sealed, and a bright fire to mock the shadows of the tale into dark corners.