His
uncle's heart! Ah, he understood, then! It was discretion, after all,
but not the kind he thought--a much more forgiveable discretion. And,
yet, what possible difference could it make should his uncle die
suddenly in Mrs. Denby's house? Fall dead across her bed, or die
kneeling beside it? Poor, twisted old fool, afraid even at the end
that death might catch him out; afraid of a final undignified gesture.
A motor blew its horn for the street crossing. Another girl laughed;
a young, thin, excited girl, to judge by her laughter. The curtains
stirred and again there was that underlying scent of tulips and
hyacinths; and then, from the hall outside, came the muffled thud of
a receiver falling to the floor. Adrian waited. The receiver was not
picked up. He strode to the door. Crumpled up over the telephone was
old Mr. McCain.
Cecil came later. She was very quick and helpful, and jealously
solicitous on Adrian's account, but in the taxicab going home she
said the one thing Adrian had hoped she wouldn't say, and yet was
sure she would. She belonged to a sex which, if it is honest at all,
is never reticently so. She believed that between the man she loved
and herself there were no possible mental withdrawals.
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