'And all that stumbling and muttering on the stairs?' he leant
forward almost threateningly. 'There isn't anybody here,
Lawford?'

'Oh, no,' said Lawford. 'We are practically alone with this, you
know,' he pointed to the book, and smiled frankly, however
faintly.

Again Mr Bethany sank into a fixed yet uneasy reverie, and again
shook himself and raised his eyes.

'Well then,' he said, in a voice all but morose in its
fretfullness, 'what I suggest is that first you keep quiet here;
and next, that you write and get your wife back. You say you are
better. I think you said she herself noticed a slight
improvement. Isn't it just exactly as I foresaw? And yet she's
gone! But that's not our business. Get her back. And don't for a
single instant waste a thought on the other; not for a single
instant, I implore you, Lawford. And in a week the whole thing
will be no more than a dreary, preposterous dream.... You don't
answer me!' he cried impulsively.

'But can one so easily forget a dream like this?'

'You don't speak out, Lawford; you mean SHE won't.'

'It must at least seem to have been in part of my own seeking, or
contriving; or at any rate--she said it--of my own hereditary or
unconscious deserving.'