IV + 

The burning eyes of the Renault made the grim Boulevard Pierre Abel almost hospitable. That was a conscientious man, Conrad Masters. How glad I was of him at that moment! What had he said about Iris? something about his having known her for years, something about “that year at Deauville⁠ ⁠… terrible for her.” That would mean, then, that Masters had been there during the Boy Fenwick tragedy. Iris, poor Iris! Such punishments⁠ ⁠… for what crimes? What crimes deserved such punishments? Iris, poor Iris! But she wouldn’t mind dying, not she. That was the trouble, Masters had said. But no doubt she knew best.⁠ ⁠… + 

The Paradis prison was a pit of blackness in the night. The dim lights behind the iron-barred windows were out, and it was impossible not to wonder if they slept up there in their iron cages, the wicked, the foolish, the betrayed. Perhaps the nightingale in its cage did not care. Perhaps those up there did not care, and slept like angels. But the wrongly accused would not sleep, that was certain. Does innocence wrongly-accused profit anyone except a very wise man or a very good man, except a man who cares nothing for the opinion of this world or one who cares only for the love of the next? I said to the taxi-driver: “Hell can know no torment like the agony of an innocent in a cage,” and when he had carefully examined his tip he agreed with me. + 

Gently as I could, I rang the bell, praying that the old woman would not be angry with me. + 

“Aha!” she chuckled. “Aha! Monsieur-toujours-de-l’audace! Mais entrez, monsieur, entrez! The doctor is just this moment arrived. Truly he is a good man, this Dr. Mastaire⁠—but our French doctors, you should see! They come for a moment, they go, and she lives or she dies, what do they care as long as they are paid? But this English doctor, he does not know how to make money easily. Madame his wife was this moment telephoning that he should go home quickly, for they are awaiting him for le bridge. Ah, cet bridge, bridge, bridge!” + 

“But you see how anxious I am! Have you heard anything since I last saw you?” + 

“To have heard nothing, young man, is to have heard good news. But sit down, the doctor himself will tell you in one moment⁠—” That demoniac bell! It clanged through the place. Perhaps of all the nations in the world the French alone are capable of fixing the loudest possible bell to a nursing-home. The fat old woman grinned vindictively at me. We had been enemies, now we were allies against the intruder. “Bah!” she said, and opened the door. From where I stood I could not see who was without, but I could hear a voice: low, hesitating, in very correct French, in Foreign Office French.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Napier!”⁠ ⁠… + 

We stared at each other in the most profound surprise and confusion. Napier, favourite of the gods, shy, sensitive, fine⁠ ⁠… just here, just now, facing me in the obscure silence of the Paris night! + 

“This is funny,” Napier made to smile. “What?” + 

Napier Harpenden and I had known each other well, as “well” goes, for years, but never before had we been alone together. But once, some years ago, I had seen him in a curious moment. Late one night I was walking down a villainous alley near the East India Docks when through a lighted window I was astonished to see Napier’s white, thin, fine face and those dark fevered eyes. He was talking earnestly to an old man and a very pretty young girl who was crying, and I felt ashamed to have seen him, for that is how Napier affected one, you were hurt at the idea of hurting him. I had wondered often what he could have been doing there, what secret good work he was at. He was a strange, secret, saintly youth, a favourite of the gods who never once relied on the favouritism of gods or men.⁠ ⁠… + 

He still stood outside, a serious slack shape in a tweed overcoat. He masked, behind that faint, deprecating smile of his, more than the mere confusion of surprise. He would very much rather it had not been me he had met just there. Napier and I were friends only because all our friends were mutual. We hadn’t ever found, tried to find, any common ground for friendship. Sincerely, I was very sorry to be there. Napier had that effect on one. + 

“Venice is waiting in the taxi,” he said. Whenever Napier and I met he would instantly speak of Venice. This was to show me that he knew Venice and I were great friends and that, if he and I weren’t great friends, that must somehow be his fault. How could you help liking a man like that? The courtesy of that favourite of the gods went so much deeper than anyone else’s: let it one day go a little deeper, and you felt that it might have gone a little too deep, down, down to self-destruction. + 

I said I had arrived in Paris only that afternoon, and had heard, by chance, that Mrs. Storm was ill. My presence there seemed, you can see, to require a more definite explanation than any he might think fit to give me. One felt, with Napier, uncomfortably familiar to be asking after Iris in this obscure place at this late hour. He and Iris had been “kids.” Then I thought, comically, of the two scrawled names on the grubby slip of paper. Well, I seemed to have rights too. More rights than Napier, really. Conrad Masters had no instructions to be nice to Napier. Poor Napier.⁠ ⁠… + 

“But,” he said, slowly, slowly, “surely she’s better by now? I only just called on the off-chance⁠ ⁠… really wanted air after the train journey more than anything else. Surely⁠ ⁠… what?” + 

I stared at him. What to say? You see, the sudden, white way he was staring at me made me feel terribly canny of anything I might say. Besides, one treated Napier differently. + 

“Better?” I repeated. “Well.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“But, look here,” he said, protested.⁠ ⁠… It was dark, there between the dim lodge and the night. Why on earth didn’t the man come in? “Venice and I are going south tomorrow, and I just thought I’d inquire⁠—but, look here, I never dreamt that she.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I at last grasped the fact that he had known she was ill. He was the only one among us who had known she was ill. One kid had known that the other kid was ill⁠ ⁠… and had waited until, on his way south, he could conveniently come round and inquire. Well! + 

“You had better come in, hadn’t you?” I said. I simply couldn’t say slap-out that Iris was ill nearly to death. You couldn’t say things like that to those dark, troubled eyes. You protected Napier from your own impulses, always. A favourite not of the gods alone.⁠ ⁠… + 

But he still stood there in the darkness, staring at me very strangely and scowling in that funny, attractive way he had. Whenever I think of Napier I can see that Napier scowl and I can hear that involuntary “what?” he would tack on to questions. + 

“Look here, something’s the matter.” His voice trembled absurdly.⁠ ⁠… “Something serious. What?” + 

“She’s very ill,” I think I said. + 

“Very!” he snapped. “What? You mean⁠ ⁠… really ill? What?” + 

“I think so,” I said. “Yes.” + 

I looked into the room, avoiding those eyes. The lay sister, a pair of horn spectacles on her nose, and without a sign of interest in us, was mending the heel of a black woollen stocking, one end of which lay coiled in a black tin box. I couldn’t somehow look at Napier just then. That, you see, was the first hint I had of the thing, and though it was no more than a hint, it tore at one. The look in Napier’s eyes, I mean. The man’s heart was in his eyes.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Look here,” he said sharply, “I don’t understand this. What? I mean, I’d no idea it was.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I don’t know anything,” I said, “except just that she’s ill.” We stared at each other. + 

“As ill,” I said, “as can be.” + 

“Oh,” he said. His eyes on me, not seeing me, he pushed past me through the doorway. And when I saw his face again, I was appalled. It was lost, abandoned, terribly unaware of everything but fear, it was enchanted by fear. He simply didn’t care but about one thing.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Haven’t seen her,” he said, and scowled at me. Not that he had, at that moment, the faintest idea who I was. + 

“Here, a cigarette,” I said. + 

He stared at it in his fingers. He crushed it.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Haven’t seen her for nearly a year,” he said in a rush, and stopped abruptly, seemed to realise me, scowled. “I say, what is it? Pneumonia or something? What?” + 

I fumbled. I wasn’t, I said, certain. Had only seen the doctor for a moment. Something inside, I thought, had gone wrong.⁠ ⁠… + 

I was immensely lost in all this. He had known she was ill⁠—but not seriously ill, nor of what! I grabbed at one certain point of behaviour for myself. One had to. I was, anyhow, going to make no mischief. Like Guy, I would give no “gratuitous information” of any sort. For better or for worse, I wouldn’t. News of septic poisoning was obviously not for Napier, not for anyone⁠—except for the two names on the grubby slip of paper. This septic poisoning seemed to mean only one of two things, a child or not a child. That was most utterly Iris’s business. Iris the desirous⁠—for a child. “To be playmates with.” And I wondered, just then, if it had been another Hector-not-so-proud. “Like to have a winner once.⁠ ⁠…” I kept on hearing that slightly husky voice saying little things. + 

“What I mean to say is,” Napier said, with sudden astounding calm, “that this is perfectly idiotic. What? You see, I hadn’t the faintest idea.⁠ ⁠…” + 

But when, deceived by the calm of his voice, I looked at him, I found it better to look away again at the frowsty old lay-sister sewing away at her stocking. It was mean to look at him, he was too naked. I realised how masked we always are, how this is a world of masked men, how we are masked all day long, even on the most trivial occasions. Then I felt his hands suddenly tight around my arm. And tighter. Now what? + 

“I’m awfully sorry,” I said idiotically. + 

“Look here⁠—I say, for God’s sake! You see, I don’t understand. What? She wrote to me weeks ago that she was going to be just slightly ill, and now.⁠ ⁠…” + 

The fingers dropped from my arm. “Hell!” he muttered. “Oh, hell! What?” He hadn’t the faintest idea of what he was saying. I wished to God he had, I didn’t want to listen to him, I hated listening to him, it was like spying on the man. Spying on Tristram wandering in the forest raving with love for Yseult. But what could I do? How leave him like this? How let him return to Venice like this? Good Lord, and Venice waiting in the taxi! If she saw him like this.⁠ ⁠… Good Lord, was the man mad to have brought Venice with him! Here, to see Iris! The misty impulses of a man of honour⁠ ⁠… do nothing behind his wife’s back. After, you know, having done everything. But⁠ ⁠… Good Lord, if Venice grew tired of waiting in the taxi and came and found Napier like this, like a demented knight in a story! Venice of the lion’s cub head, the mischievous, loyal eyes, dear Venice! adoring and adorable Venice! Napier’s wife.⁠ ⁠… + 

And, at that moment, I saw Venice again at the Loyalty, that night ten months ago, happily waiting for Napier, whose wife she would be in three days. “Darling, darling, darling!” That night of Gerald’s death! And then for the first time I remembered the cry of “Iris!” in the night, and the two red rear-lights swerving into South Audley Street, and I understood how it was that Iris in her letter had called me her “destroyer”⁠ ⁠… her “destroyer” with love, for no lover could have passed her way that night had I told her about Gerald. And Napier had passed her way, Napier whom she had seen that night for the first time in many years, Napier her ancient friend. “There were two roads leading from a certain tree.⁠ ⁠…” And the two roads had come together in the darkness of that night, in the darkness of cruelly blind chance, and now they had come together again in the darkness of this night, while Venice waited outside.⁠ ⁠… + 

I couldn’t, you can see, not do anything just then. I couldn’t let this love-lost man be found by Venice in her husband’s shoes. Napier and Venice, the happy lovers.⁠ ⁠… I was on Venice’s side. For Venice! Always, I was for Venice. One likes so few people, but one likes those few very, very much. This love-lost man must be woken up, must behave. Of course he must behave! Venice, for Venice! How dared he have done this to Venice? Marrying her on the third day from that night.⁠ ⁠… + 

I asked him where he was staying, and when he said “the Meurice,” I told him that if he would go now I could ring him up when I had seen the doctor. “It’s no good waiting here,” I said. “I know the doctor.” + 

He stared at me with the immense, the devastating, dignity of the utterly careless. I bitterly wanted to wake him up, to make him see the thing he had done, the beastly thing. For Venice! “It’s no good,” I said cruelly, “keeping Venice waiting forever.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He scowled at me, or at something just behind my shoulder. “I’m going to see Iris,” he said. + 

It was quite definite, he was going to see Iris. It would probably, I supposed, do Iris all the good in the world to see Napier on this critical night. Napier and Iris. It might make her care whether she lived or died⁠ ⁠… but why shouldn’t she die? Venice would condemn her to die. Iris was the foe. Why shouldn’t she die? You can’t do things like that, and not die. Stealing like a little thief into the garden of Venice, and stealing away like a little thief⁠ ⁠… to bear Napier’s child, unknown to Napier.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Hell!” he muttered. I stared at him, at those burning, broken eyes. + 

“Hell!” he said. “Oh, God, what hell! What? If you only knew.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I don’t want to know,” I snapped. Well, did one want to know? But he didn’t hear, didn’t care, didn’t see. Being with him, you can see, was exactly like eavesdropping. Why, if Venice came in and saw this love-lost man⁠ ⁠… her Napier, her darling, like this, with burning broken eyes. But there are some things that can’t happen! You couldn’t take Napier from Venice. And how quickly, how poignantly, Venice, if she saw him like this, would know the difference between his easy, smiling love for her and this⁠ ⁠… damnable madness. + 

But in the dark taxi she wouldn’t see his face, and I was just about to try again to get him away when he said fiercely: “It’s not as though I don’t know anything about it. Or do you think Iris is a liar? What?” + 

“Napier, you really must pull yourself together⁠—” + 

“No, but anyone would think I was a most fearful cad. What?” + 

And he scowled, in that Napier way of his that made one want to forgive him everything. “I mean, not coming before, seeing she’s so ill⁠ ⁠… waiting all this time, and coming just now. Why, she wrote to me four weeks ago, saying she was going to be just slightly ill and have a rest for a week or two, so of course⁠—Oh, look here, here’s the letter, you’ll see for yourself⁠—” + 

“But I don’t want to see for myself. Steady, man! I quite understand. Of course you couldn’t know.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“No, but look here, you’ll see.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Feverishly he began fumbling in his inside-pockets, pulling out papers, a pocketbook, passports.⁠ ⁠… + 

Venice could be very still. I imagined her in the doorway, looking at Napier in this state. She would be very still, and in her stillness she would be destroyed. Venice was jealous, so jealous and possessive. “Got to be with Napier,” she had pleaded to me once. “You don’t know what he’s thinking about half the time, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing the other half.” + 

Some of the papers dropped to the floor, and I picked them up and thrust them into his gaping pocket. The old nun smiled at me over her spectacles, and then looked at Napier and tapped her forehead. But you could see she liked the looks of Napier. “Quelle belle silhouette!” she grinned. I don’t believe that Napier to this day knows there was anyone but our two selves in that lodge. + 

He waved a white thing covered with scrawled pencil-marks, and beside it I somehow saw that letter from a draughty house on a hill of strangled olives. But between the two came the vision of Venice destroyed. + 

“I don’t want to read it, Napier. I quite understand. What on earth does it matter whether you knew or not, so long as you know now?” + 

“Thinks a lot of you,” he said darkly. “Told me, last time I saw her.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He passed a hand over his mouth. I said: “But.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Beastly,” he said, looking at me with enormous, dark surprise. “That’s what I feel. Beastly. As though my skin was a dirty shirt. Ever get that? I mean, here she’s dying, and I⁠ ⁠… God, how one gets to know oneself! What? But I’d like you to see. I mean, since it’s you. She thinks a lot of you, I know she does. Thinks you’re nice. Funny how she says that, ‘nice.’ What? But what’s she want to lie for? Iris never lies. Never. That’s what beats me. I mean, why, to me? What? Go on, you’ll see.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Crumpled the letter was, but he had, in a sort of way, smoothed it out. I stared at it. I had to, for he was watching me with those ruined, pleading eyes. The greyhound unleashed.⁠ ⁠… + 

“She’s dying.” I heard his voice from miles away. “You can’t tell me! She’s dying.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“She won’t die,” I said firmly, glad to look up from the letter. And, you know, I was quite certain at that moment that she wouldn’t die. The beloved of the favourite of the gods wouldn’t die. The favourites of the gods are not let off so easily. Oh, she wouldn’t die! It would be too easy to die. “The Marches are never let off anything.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I stared at the crumpled-looking thing in my hand. I didn’t read it. The poor devil was only showing me the thing because, at that lost moment, he was starving for understanding, for anyone’s understanding, after these ten months of silence, of Venice-Napier-Iris silence.⁠ ⁠… + 

I couldn’t, merely from the wretched fact of staring at the thing blankly, avoid the first few lines of that schoolgirl scrawl. “Napier, I have to go to a nursing-home for a few weeks’ rest. Napier, dear Napier! I’ve tried not to write, you know I have, just as we promised, but as we are never to meet again I’d like you to pray⁠—” + 

That is all I read, and there I stood, staring at that crumpled letter like an idiot. “As we are never to meet again.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Figures moved, I could see them, hear them, their cries, laughter, silences. Their silences. Napier, Venice, Iris. They had come together, blindly, desperately. By chance⁠—but it is written in vinegar that there is no such thing as chance. And I, why, I had been appointed, a silly finger of fate, to make “chance” more sure! They had come together, those three, propelled to each other from darkness for darkness’s sake. The weak to the weak, the strong in chains. Always that is the way of things, and for no reason at all except life’s most damnable unfairness, which is forever saying: the weak shall be made weaker, the strong shall be destroyed. Venice was strong, strong as gold, in loyalty and love. Incorruptible, golden Venice! Salute to Venice! So, said the Prince of Darkness, she must be destroyed, and to destroy her in the most efficient and painful way Napier must see Iris, unseen since girlhood, a grown-up Napier must see a grown-up Iris, a youth curiously sensible to the pitiful must suddenly see an Iris wrapped in tragedy and scandal, a helpless, hopeless, unhappy woman⁠—the favourite of the gods and the poor shameless, shameful lady! And it was arranged, the destruction of Venice, to begin with a sudden, surprised cry of “Iris!” in the night, and then, behold! two cars would sweep through the silent streets into the heart of the dark forest of London, even to Napier’s small toy house in Brompton Square. Oh, how clearly one could see them, hear them, those friends of long ago. Clear to see they were, fumbling with their lives in the darkness of all life, most emphatically not talking of love, most emphatically being old friends. Clear to see, those two, Napier and Iris, the ancient friends. Maybe, to make chance more sure and flesh more weak, which is a jesting habit of the fallen archangel’s, they had been in love long ago and had been unhappy and had parted. The queer death of Boy Fenwick would have come between a boy and girl love, and across the wide gulf that separates a young man of consequence from a lady of pleasure they would not have seen each other for a long time. “There were two roads leading from a certain tree.” And one might hear Napier that night, not this love-lost thing, but the favourite of the gods, happy on the wings of an ancient friendship, pulling at Iris’s arm to persuade her out of her car: “Iris, come in for a moment. Oh, come along, Iris! I know how fond you are of a nice glass of cold water, and I have some of the most superior cold water in London. What? And we’ll never have another chance to talk again.⁠ ⁠…” And Iris, Iris of the lament for a child! Iris had lit a flame and was like to be burnt to death in the cold fires of that flame. Iris had lit a flame, and the flames that Iris lit seemed quenchable only by death. Boy and Iris. Hector and Iris. Napier and Iris. But Napier could not die, favoured of the gods. Iris could not die, “for the Marches are never let off anything,” and so it would be the younger brother of Hector-not-so-proud who must die, who must have died, thoughtfully trying to tempt his mother into the carelessness of death. + 

The lay-sister had gone into the other room, which must have been a sort of kitchen, and Napier had taken her chair. He sat there, shadowed with whiteness, scowling into the black tin box. + 

“I see,” I said. “Of course.⁠ ⁠…” I made him take the letter back, and suddenly he looked up at me intently. He’d find out something, he would. + 

“She is dying, isn’t she? You’re certain yourself, aren’t you? What?” + 

“The doctor should be in in a moment, and you can ask him. No, I don’t think she’s dying. My sister had the same sort of thing, and she’s dancing at the moment⁠—” + 

“Same sort of⁠—what thing, then? What?” + 

A gaffe, a faux pas, a bloomer! He scowled up at me, blackly intent.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Ptomaine poisoning,” I said. + 

“Oh, God!” he said. “Oh, God! What? Poison.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He stared at the letter which I had put into his hand. He turned it about, and seemed to think profoundly. “You see,” he muttered, “it’s all wrong, this. All wrong. What?” + 

I wasn’t cast for a moralist. What I said, very uncomfortably, was: “Well.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“All this messing about,” Napier scowled at the letter. Then he looked at me, darkly, helplessly. + 

“Get let in for things,” he said. + 

“Difficult,” I said. “I know.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“God, isn’t it! Difficult.⁠ ⁠… What? I mean, when you want to be⁠ ⁠… well, when you want to live clean. We promised, oh God, yes! not to write, never to meet.⁠ ⁠… Must live clean, you see. What? There isn’t, when you come to think of it, any other way to live.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Guy says that.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Guy? Yes, but⁠ ⁠… need guts like Guy’s, don’t you? What? Look here,” he suddenly waved the letter at me, “will you go out and keep Venice company for a moment? I mean, see what she’s doing? And I’ll see the doctor fellow and make him let me see Iris for a moment. Promise wiped out by approach of death.⁠ ⁠… What? I mean, lonely for her here.⁠ ⁠… Told me, last time I saw her that she was lonely. Hurts, loneliness. What? And then I find her in this hole.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He thrust the letter into his gaping coat-pocket. I could see it there, that pencilled scrawl. Letters, letters, letters like radium-bombs, left lying about for years, then bursting. What fools men were, keeping letters⁠ ⁠… travelling about with them, sticking them into their coat-pockets. Suppose Venice saw that letter⁠ ⁠… just a few lines of it. Whether Iris lived or died⁠ ⁠… suppose Venice saw just a few lines of that letter. For Venice.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Napier,” I said. + 

He stared at me, extraordinarily handsome at that moment, and I remember thinking just then of what is always said, that women are not very attracted by good-looking men. But what is always said must be wrong. + 

“I say,” he said, “got a cigarette? What?” + 

“Napier,” I said, “give me that letter.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Or,” I said, “have two matches to your cigarette.⁠ ⁠…” + 

A tiny smile fluttered round the thin quivering lips. “There’s no end to it,” he whispered, “is there? Once you begin. The nasty precautions.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He struck a match, and the flame lit the ruin in his dark, fevered eyes. “You can’t,” he said, “have anything cleaner than love. You can’t. This love, anyway. Clean⁠ ⁠… clean as the Virgin Mary. And then⁠ ⁠… you’re dogged by dirt. You think fine things, fine sacrifices⁠ ⁠… and you’re dirty as all Sodom and Gomorrah. All this nastiness round a thing, all this messing about.⁠ ⁠…” + 

It was as the letter burnt in his hand and fluttered, just like a hurt crow, to the floor, while he watched it with intent seriousness, that I heard a step by the door in the other room. To see Conrad Masters alone, I hurried towards it. There he was, tired, worried-looking, his sharp features sticking like a great bird’s out of that rough brown coat. + 

“Bad,” he muttered. “Can’t do more. She’s conscious, too. And doesn’t give a damn. Not a damn. I told her you were here, and she said ‘Nice’ to that, but didn’t seem to think you were worth living for. Need a miracle now.⁠ ⁠… ‘Nice!’ ” + 

“But, good God,” I said, “we’ve got a miracle here! He’s a bit mad, but miracle is his second name.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“And what’s his first?” Masters snapped. + 

“Harpenden.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“First name, Christian name,” said Masters wearily. “Napier, by any chance?” + 

“You’re right,” said Masters. A decidedly undecided man? Why, he radiated resolution: and a lean sort of mirth. “Never know your luck,” he said. “Not in this world.⁠ ⁠…” I just managed to catch him by the coat as he plunged towards the other room, in which one could make out the tail of Napier’s coat. “Masters,” I whispered, “I went and told him it was ptomaine poisoning.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Good,” said Masters. Those gentle worried eyes with the faintly amused look. “That’s all right,” he smiled. “Young ass.” + 

There sat Napier, a lost man.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Come along,” Masters jabbed at him. “Come along, man! Waive introduction. Life and death.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Napier jumped up. Masters looked almost fresh and boyish beside him. A captain of men, that was Conrad Masters. + 

“I say,” Napier said.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Look here,” said Masters, “I’m taking you in to cheer her up. Might make all the difference. Just might.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Napier tried to smile. Oh, he tried. + 

“But, doctor,” he said. “Is she⁠ ⁠… going?” + 

“She wants to go, that’s the trouble. Anyone would think,” snapped that captain of men, “that I was committing a felony in trying to keep her alive. By the way she looks at me. You’ve got to cheer her up, Mr. eh.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Captain Harpenden,” I said. + 

“You’ve got to make her care whether she lives or dies. That’s your business, Captain Harpenden. I’ll give you five minutes to do it in.⁠ ⁠…” Napier looked from him to me. He scowled immensely. + 

“I’ll go out to Venice,” I said, but I don’t suppose that Napier, passing me, heard a word. Conrad Masters stayed a second. Gone was the captain of men. He looked terribly worried.⁠ ⁠… + 

“I say, want to play bridge?” + 

“Bridge!” I said. “Bridge? Bridge!” + 

He looked terribly worried.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Well, my wife wants⁠—Oh, wait till I’m back! I’ll drop you anyway.” And he was off, his brown coat flouncing peevishly. Through the open door I could see Napier, his coat open, everything about him open, standing in what looked like a wide courtyard.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Mais quelle belle silhouette!” chattered the old nun. “Le vrai type brun anglais. Mais c’est naturel qu’il soit fou avec ces yeux là.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Napier and Conrad Masters walked across the courtyard towards a tall red-looking building. Its door was pointed like a church door, and windows here and there were alight. Through one of them a nun was looking at me. On the sill outside the largest window of all, which was not alight, stood a pineapple and some grapes on a plate. + 