doubtful, however, whether the understanding progressed entirely in the
fashion he had desired. Nora, curled up in an easy-chair, affecting to
be sleepy, but still listening earnestly, felt at last that intervention
was necessary. The self-revelation of Miller under Tallente's surgical
questioning was beginning to disturb even their host.

"I am being neglected," she complained. "If no one talks to me, I shall
go home."

Tallente rose at once and sat on the lounge by her side. Dartrey stood
on the hearth rug and plunged into an ingenious effort to reconcile
various points of difference which had arisen between his two guests.
Tallente all the time was politely acquiescent, Miller a little sullen.
Like all men with brains acute enough to deal logically with a
procession of single problems, he resented because he failed altogether
to understand that a wider field of circumstances could possibly alter
human vision.

Tallente walked home with Nora. They chose the longer way, by the
Embankment.

"This is the Cockney's antithesis to the moonlight and hills of you
country folk," Nora observed, as she pointed to the yellow lights
gashing across the black water.

Tallente drew a long breath of content.

"It's good to be here, anyway. I am glad to be out of that house," he
confessed.