“It doesn’t require much effort. Nice little fellow, isn’t he, Best? He tells me that you walked up together.” “We did,” said Grainger, with his own inner sense of grim humor at the memory. “I should think you would find him rather limited.” “But I’m limited, too,” said Gavan, mildly. “I like being with people so neatly adapted to their functions. There are no loose ends about Best; nothing unfulfilled or uncomfortable. He’s all there--all that there is of him to be there.” “Not a very lively companion.” “I’m not a lively companion, either,” Gavan once more, with his mild gaiety, retorted. Grainger at this gave a harsh laugh. “No, you certainly aren’t,” he agreed. They had twice paced the length of the yew-tree shadow and Gavan had asked no question; and Grainger felt, as the pause grew, that Gavan never would ask questions. Any onus for a disturbance of the atmosphere must rest entirely on himself, and to disturb it he would have to be brutal. He jerked aside the veils of the placid dialogue with sudden violence. “I’ve seen Eppie,” he said. He had intended to use her formal name only, but the nearer word rushed out and seemed to shatter the magic that held him off. Gavan’s face grew a shade paler. “Have you?” he said. “You knew that she had been ill?” “I heard of it, recently, from General Carmichael. It was nothing serious, I think.” “It will be serious.” Grainger stood still and gazed into his eyes. “Do you want to kill her?” It struck him, when he had said it, and while Gavan received the words and seemed to reflect on them, that however artificial his atmosphere might be he would never evade any reality brought forcibly into it. He contemplated this one and did not pretend not to understand. “I want Eppie to be happy,” he said presently. “Happy, yes. So do I,” broke from Grainger with a groan. They stood now near the great trunk of the yew-tree, and turning away, striking the steel-gray bark monotonously with his fist, he went on: “I love her, as you know. And she loves you. She told me--I made her tell me. But any one with eyes could see it; even your gossiping little fool of a parson here had heard of it--was relieved for your escape. But who cares for the cackling? And you have crippled her, broken her. You have tossed aside that woman whose little finger is worth more to the world than your whole being. I wish to God she’d never seen you.” “So do I,” Gavan said. “I’d kill you with the greatest pleasure--if it could do her any good.” There was relief for Grainger in getting out these fundamental things. “Yes,--I quite understand that. So would I,” Gavan acquiesced,--“kill myself, I mean,--if it would do her any good.” “Don’t try that. It wouldn’t. She’s beyond all help but one. So I am here to put it to you.”