The two men sat and smoked in a silence which Tyson, as usual, was the first to break. "I wouldn't like to swear," said he, "that I don't go abroad again before long. It's my only chance. I'm knocked out of the game here. It's too quick, too hard, and the rules are too cursedly complicated." "All the same, I'd wait a bit before I flung it up, if I were you." "Wait? Wait? I've done nothing but wait ever since I came to this detestable country, and my chance never turned up. It never will turn up--here." "Why not?" "My own fault, I suppose. I've spent my life in going round and round the earth passionately in a circle. I don't say that perpetual rotation is a natural function of the ordinary human being; but it's my function--I'm good for nothing else. And they expect a man with the world in his brain and the devil in his blood to live decently in this damnable city of fog and filth! And when the world-madness comes on him nobody knows anything about this particular form of mania--the poor wretch must get into a stiff shirt or a strait waistcoat and converse sanely with that innocent woman, his wife. If he doesn't there's a scandal, and the devil to pay--" Stanistreet looked grave. Whither was all this tending? To a final abandonment of Mrs. Nevill Tyson? "Of course, the mistake was to try. There might have been a chance for me if I'd had a tithe of your sense. But being what I am, I must needs go and marry. It was the deed of a lunatic." "Isn't it rather late to go back on that now? What's the good?" "None, you fool, none. And if there's anything that stamps a man as a cur and a cad, it's this vile habit of slanging the women for his own sins. All the same--I'm not blaming anybody but myself, mind--all the same, I being what I am, there's no doubt I married the wrong sort of woman. I don't mind making that confession to you. I believe you know more about me than anybody, barring my Maker." Stanistreet looked straight in front of him, terribly detached and stern. "She was not the wrong sort," he said slowly; "but she may have been the wrong woman for you." "Men like you and me, Stanistreet, contrive to get hold of the wrong woman; I don't know why." "You must know that your marriage did nothing for you that was not very well done before." "Yes. It seems to me that there was a time when I had an immortal soul. That was before the Framley episode. You remember? An edifying experience." Stanistreet assented. He knew the horrible story, of a mad boy and a bad woman. Perhaps it accounted for the ugliest facts in Tyson's character. He was warped from his youth, the bitter, premature manhood, so soon corrupt. "That woman was possessed of seven distinct devils, and amongst them they didn't leave much of my immortal soul. And you hear men talk of their 'first love.' Good God!"