took her excitements, lawful or otherwise,
vicariously in the doomed and dedicated persons of her friends.
Brocklebank knew it. Blond, spectacled, middle-aged, and ponderous,
he regarded his wife's performances and other people's with a
leniency as amazing as her own. He was hovering about old Lady
Paignton in the background, where Straker could see his benignant
gaze resting on Furnival and Mrs. Viveash.

"Poor dears," said Fanny, as if in extenuation of her tolerance,
"they _are_ enjoying themselves."

"So are you," said Straker.

"I like to see other people happy. Don't you?"

"Yes. If I'm not responsible for their--happiness."

"Who _is_ responsible?" She challenged.

"I say, aren't you?"

"Me responsible? Have you seen her husband?"

"I have."

"Well----" she left it to him.

"Where _is_ Viveash?"

"At the moment he is in Liverpool, or should be--on business."

"You didn't ask him?"

"Ask him? Is he the sort you can ask?"

"Oh, come, he's not so bad."

"He's awful. He's impossible. He--he excuses everything."

"I don't see him excusing this, or your share in it. If he knew."

"If he knew what?"

"That you'd asked Furny down."

"But he doesn't know. He needn't ever know."

"He needn't. But people like Viveash have a perfect genius for the
unnecessary. Besides----"

He paused before the unutterable, and she faced him with her smile
of innocent interrogation.

"Well," he said, "it's so jolly risky. These things, you know, only
end one way."

Fanny's eyes said plainly that to _their_ vision all sorts of ways
were possible.

"If it were any other man but----" He stopped short at Furnival's
name.

Fanny lowered her eyes almost as if she had been convicted of
indiscretion.

"You see," she said, "any other man wouldn't do. He's the one and
only man. There never was any other. That's the awful part of it for
her."

"Then why on earth did she marry the other fellow?"

"Because Furny couldn't marry her. And he wouldn't, either. That's
not his way."

"I know it's not his way. And if Viveash took steps, what then?"

"Then perhaps--he'd have to."

"Good Lord----"

"Oh, it isn't a deep-laid plan."

"I never said it was."

He didn't think it. Marriages had been made at Amberley, and
divorces, too; not by any plan of Fanny's, but by the risks she
took. Seeing the dangerous way she mixed things, he didn't, he
couldn't suspect her of a plan, but he did suspect her of an unholy
joy i