nt fact I have to dwell upon. But please talk a
little about yourself. It will do me good."

She, however, had little to tell him. His letter had dealt her a heavy
blow. His silence about the details of his sudden action had made her
the prey of her imagination, which had created frightful
possibilities. Her favourite theory had been--an indiscretion
committed by him in some moment of depression and a remorse that had
resulted in a marriage with some vile person. But she had been
somewhat reassured at seeing him go into the theatre one day in
company with Cleo. That had been a pure accident, of course, but it
had enabled her to divine a good deal. Cleo's appearance--she had
taken particular notice of her face--had at least narrowed that vast
dreadfulness which had till then tortured her. But it was a face that
by no means pleased her.

"However," continued Helen, "it seems I've been talking about you
instead of about myself. I have been living, I suppose, in the usual
conventional routine. My conduct has been really most exemplary and
the austerest chaperon would have patted me on the head approvingly.
Oh, no, I forget. There's one little matter over which I should have
got lectured and that is my rejection of so eligible a bachelor as Mr.
Ingram, on the mere ground that I couldn't overlook his past life.
Anyhow, he hasn't committed suicide, though I fancy he has done
something worse."

"You mean he has followed my example?" suggested Morgan.

"Not anything as bad as that. You know I'm only the daughter of a
country gentleman and the widow of a baronet. Well, he has consoled
himself by marrying the genuine brand of aristocracy, though she's a
_divorcee_. Her income's double mine; her intelligence one-tenth of
mine."

"She must be a very brilliant woman, indeed."

"You have developed courtly qualities, I perceive. But I am quite
ready to concede, on re-consideration, that her intellect is only the
hundredth part of mine. You know I am frightfully conceited about my
brains. But now tell me how everything came to happen? Where did you
meet her?"

He recollected that Ingram was implicated in the recital and could not
be kept out. But he was in a mood when he could no longer keep back
anything. He hungered for every crumb of sympathy he could get, and,
besides, he looked upon things now with such changed eyes that such
reservations relating to his personal life as he had before set up
seemed futile and meaningless.