It was more than a fortnight after Reardon’s removal to Islington when Jasper Milvain heard for the first time of what had happened. He was coming down from the office of the Will-o’-the-Wisp one afternoon, after a talk with the editor concerning a paragraph in his last week’s causerie which had been complained of as libellous, and which would probably lead to the ‘case’ so much desired by everyone connected with the paper, when someone descending from a higher storey of the building overtook him and laid a hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw Whelpdale.

‘What brings you on these premises?’ he asked, as they shook hands.

‘A man I know has just been made sub-editor of Chat, upstairs. He has half promised to let me do a column of answers to correspondents.’

‘Cosmetics? Fashions? Cookery?’

‘I’m not so versatile as all that, unfortunately. No, the general information column. “Will you be so good as to inform me, through the medium of your invaluable paper, what was the exact area devastated by the Great Fire of London?” — that kind of thing, you know. Hopburn — that’s the fellow’s name — tells me that his predecessor always called the paper Chat-moss, because of the frightful difficulty he had in filling it up each week. By-the-bye, what a capital column that is of yours in Will-o’-the-Wisp. I know nothing like it in English journalism; upon my word I don’t!’

‘Glad you like it. Some people are less fervent in their admiration.’

Jasper recounted the affair which had just been under discussion in the office.

‘It may cost a couple of thousands, but the advertisement is worth that, Patwin thinks. Barlow is delighted; he wouldn’t mind paying double the money to make those people a laughing-stock for a week or two.’

They issued into the street, and walked on together; Milvain, with his keen eye and critical smile, unmistakably the modern young man who cultivates the art of success; his companion of a less pronounced type, but distinguished by a certain subtlety of countenance, a blending of the sentimental and the shrewd.

‘Of course you know all about the Reardons?’ said Whelpdale.

‘Haven’t seen or heard of them lately. What is it?’

‘Then you don’t know that they have parted?’

‘Parted?’

‘I only heard about it last night; Biffen told me. Reardon is doing clerk’s work at a hospital somewhere in the East-end, and his wife has gone to live at her mother’s house.’

‘Ho, ho!’ exclaimed Jasper, thoughtfully. ‘Then the crash has come. Of course I knew it must be impending. I’m sorry for Reardon.’

‘I’m sorry for his wife.’

‘Trust you for thinking of women first, Whelpdale.’

‘It’s in an honourable way, my dear fellow. I’m a slave to women, true, but all in an honourable way. After that last adventure of mine most men would be savage and cynical, wouldn’t they, now? I’m nothing of the kind. I think no worse of women — not a bit. I reverence them as much as ever. There must be a good deal of magnanimity in me, don’t you think?’

Jasper laughed unrestrainedly.

‘But it’s the simple truth,’ pursued the other. ‘You should have seen the letter I wrote to that girl at Birmingham — all charity and forgiveness. I meant it, every word of it. I shouldn’t talk to everyone like this, you know; but it’s as well to show a friend one’s best qualities now and then.’

‘Is Reardon still living at the old place?’

‘No, no. They sold up everything and let the flat. He’s in lodgings somewhere or other. I’m not quite intimate enough with him to go and see him under the circumstances. But I’m surprised you know nothing about it.’

‘I haven’t seen much of them this year. Reardon — well, I’m afraid he hasn’t very much of the virtue you claim for yourself. It rather annoys him to see me going ahead.’

‘Really? His character never struck me in that way.’

‘You haven’t come enough in contact with him. At all events, I can’t explain his change of manner in any other way. But I’m sorry for him; I am, indeed. At a hospital? I suppose Carter has given him the old job again?’

‘Don’t know. Biffen doesn’t talk very freely about it; there’s a good deal of delicacy in Biffen, you know. A thoroughly good-hearted fellow. And so is Reardon, I believe, though no doubt he has his weaknesses.’

‘Oh, an excellent fellow! But weakness isn’t the word. Why, I foresaw all this from the very beginning. The first hour’s talk I ever had with him was enough to convince me that he’d never hold his own. But he really believed that the future was clear before him; he imagined he’d go on getting more and more for his books. An extraordinary thing that that girl had such faith in him!’

They parted soon after this, and Milvain went homeward, musing upon what he had heard. It was his purpose to spend the whole evening on some work which pressed for completion, but he found an unusual difficulty in settling to it. About eight o’clock he gave up the effort, arrayed himself in the costume of black and white, and journeyed to Westbourne Park, where his destination was the house of Mrs Edmund Yule. Of the servant who opened to him he inquired if Mrs Yule was at home, and received an answer in the affirmative.

‘Any company with her?’

‘A lady — Mrs Carter.’

‘Then please to give my name, and ask if Mrs Yule can see me.’

He was speedily conducted to the drawing-room, where he found the lady of the house, her son, and Mrs Carter. For Mrs Reardon his eye sought in vain.

‘I’m so glad you have come,’ said Mrs Yule, in a confidential tone. ‘I have been wishing to see you. Of course, you know of our sad trouble?’

‘I have heard of it only to-day.’

‘From Mr Reardon himself?’

‘No; I haven’t seen him.’

‘I do wish you had! We should have been so anxious to know how he impressed you.’

‘How he impressed me?’

‘My mother has got hold of the notion,’ put in John Yule, ‘that he’s not exactly compos mentis. I’ll admit that he went on in a queer sort of way the last time I saw him.’

‘And my husband thinks he is rather strange,’ remarked Mrs Carter.

‘He has gone back to the hospital, I understand — ’

‘To a new branch that has just been opened in the City Road,’ replied Mrs Yule. ‘And he’s living in a dreadful place — one of the most shocking alleys in the worst part of Islington. I should have gone to see him, but I really feel afraid; they give me such an account of the place. And everyone agrees that he has such a very wild look, and speaks so strangely.’

‘Between ourselves,’ said John, ‘there’s no use in exaggerating. He’s living in a vile hole, that’s true, and Carter says he looks miserably ill, but of course he may be as sane as we are.

Jasper listened to all this with no small astonishment.

‘And Mrs Reardon?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry to say she is far from well,’ replied Mrs Yule. ‘To-day she has been obliged to keep her room. You can imagine what a shock it has been to her. It came with such extraordinary suddenness. Without a word of warning, her husband announced that he had taken a clerkship and was going to remove immediately to the East-end. Fancy! And this when he had already arranged, as you know, to go to the South Coast and write his next book under the influences of the sea air. He was anything but well; we all knew that, and we had all joined in advising him to spend the summer at the seaside. It seemed better that he should go alone; Mrs Reardon would, of course, have gone down for a few days now and then. And at a moment’s notice everything is changed, and in such a dreadful way! I cannot believe that this is the behaviour of a sane man!’

Jasper understood that an explanation of the matter might have been given in much more homely terms; it was natural that Mrs Yule should leave out of sight the sufficient, but ignoble, cause of her son-in-law’s behaviour.

‘You see in what a painful position we are placed,’ continued the euphemistic lady. ‘It is so terrible even to hint that Mr Reardon is not responsible for his actions, yet how are we to explain to our friends this extraordinary state of things?’

‘My husband is afraid Mr Reardon may fall seriously ill,’ said Mrs Carter. ‘And how dreadful! In such a place as that!’

‘It would be so kind of you to go and see him, Mr Milvain,’ urged Mrs Yule. ‘We should be so glad to hear what you think.’

‘Certainly, I will go,’ replied Jasper. ‘Will you give me his address?’

He remained for an hour, and before his departure the subject was discussed with rather more frankness than at first; even the word ‘money’ was once or twice heard.

‘Mr Carter has very kindly promised,’ said Mrs Yule, ‘to do his best to hear of some position that would be suitable. It seems a most shocking thing that a successful author should abandon his career in this deliberate way; who could have imagined anything of the kind two years ago? But it is clearly quite impossible for him to go on as at present — if there is really no reason for believing his mind disordered.’

A cab was summoned for Mrs Carter, and she took her leave, suppressing her native cheerfulness to the tone of the occasion. A minute or two after, Milvain left the house.

He had walked perhaps twenty yards, almost to the end of the silent street in which his friends’ house was situated, when a man came round the corner and approached him. At once he recognised the figure, and in a moment he was face to face with Reardon. Both stopped. Jasper held out his hand, but the other did not seem to notice it.

‘You are coming from Mrs Yule’s?’ said Reardon, with a strange smile.

By the gaslight his face showed pale and sunken, and he met Jasper’s look with fixedness.

‘Yes, I am. The fact is, I went there to hear of your address. Why haven’t you let me know about all this?’

‘You went to the flat?’

‘No, I was told about you by Whelpdale.’

Reardon turned in the direction whence he had come, and began to walk slowly; Jasper kept beside him.

‘I’m afraid there’s something amiss between us, Reardon,’ said the latter, just glancing at his companion.

‘There’s something amiss between me and everyone,’ was the reply, in an unnatural voice.

‘You look at things too gloomily. Am I detaining you, by-the-bye? You were going — ’

‘Nowhere.’

‘Then come to my rooms, and let us see if we can’t talk more in the old way.’

‘Your old way of talk isn’t much to my taste, Milvain. It has cost me too much.’

Jasper gazed at him. Was there some foundation for Mrs Yule’s seeming extravagance? This reply sounded so meaningless, and so unlike Reardon’s manner of speech, that the younger man experienced a sudden alarm.

‘Cost you too much? I don’t understand you.’

They had turned into a broader thoroughfare, which, however, was little frequented at this hour. Reardon, his hands thrust into the pockets of a shabby overcoat and his head bent forward, went on at a slow pace, observant of nothing. For a moment or two he delayed reply, then said in an unsteady voice:

‘Your way of talking has always been to glorify success, to insist upon it as the one end a man ought to keep in view. If you had talked so to me alone, it wouldn’t have mattered. But there was generally someone else present. Your words had their effect; I can see that now. It’s very much owing to you that I am deserted, now that there’s no hope of my ever succeeding.’

Jasper’s first impulse was to meet this accusation with indignant denial, but a sense of compassion prevailed. It was so painful to see the defeated man wandering at night near the house where his wife and child were comfortably sheltered; and the tone in which he spoke revealed such profound misery.

‘That’s a most astonishing thing to say,’ Jasper replied. ‘Of course I know nothing of what has passed between you and your wife, but I feel certain that I have no more to do with what has happened than any other of your acquaintances.’

‘You may feel as certain as you will, but your words and your example have influenced my wife against me. You didn’t intend that; I don’t suppose it for a moment. It’s my misfortune, that’s all.’

‘That I intended nothing of the kind, you need hardly say, I should think. But you are deceiving yourself in the strangest way. I’m afraid to speak plainly; I’m afraid of offending you. But can you recall something that I said about the time of your marriage? You didn’t like it then, and certainly it won’t be pleasant to you to remember it now. If you mean that your wife has grown unkind to you because you are unfortunate, there’s no need to examine into other people’s influence for an explanation of that.’

Reardon turned his face towards the speaker.

‘Then you have always regarded my wife as a woman likely to fail me in time of need?’

‘I don’t care to answer a question put in that way. If we are no longer to talk with the old friendliness, it’s far better we shouldn’t discuss things such as this.’

‘Well, practically you have answered. Of course I remember those words of yours that you refer to. Whether you were right or wrong doesn’t affect what I say.’

He spoke with a dull doggedness, as though mental fatigue did not allow him to say more.

‘It’s impossible to argue against such a charge,’ said Milvain. ‘I am convinced it isn’t true, and that’s all I can answer. But perhaps you think this extraordinary influence of mine is still being used against you?’

‘I know nothing about it,’ Reardon replied, in the same unmodulated voice.

‘Well, as I have told you, this was my first visit to Mrs Yule’s since your wife has been there, and I didn’t see her; she isn’t very well, and keeps her room. I’m glad it happened so — that I didn’t meet her. Henceforth I shall keep away from the family altogether, so long, at all events, as your wife remains with them. Of course I shan’t tell anyone why; that would be impossible. But you shan’t have to fear that I am decrying you. By Jove! an amiable figure you make of me!’

‘I have said what I didn’t wish to say, and what I oughtn’t to have said. You must misunderstand me; I can’t help it.’

Reardon had been walking for hours, and was, in truth, exhausted.

He became mute. Jasper, whose misrepresentation was wilful, though not maliciously so, also fell into silence; he did not believe that his conversations with Amy had seriously affected the course of events, but he knew that he had often said things to her in private which would scarcely have fallen from his lips if her husband had been present — little depreciatory phrases, wrong rather in tone than in terms, which came of his irresistible desire to assume superiority whenever it was possible. He, too, was weak, but with quite another kind of weakness than Reardon’s. His was the weakness of vanity, which sometimes leads a man to commit treacheries of which he would............