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He had done all that she supposed, and more. First of all, he drank a little more than was good for him; this happened occasionally now. Then he sat down and wrote what he thought was a very terse and biting letter to Stanistreet, in which he said: "You needn't call. You will not find either of us at home at Ridgmount Gardens from May to August, nor at Thorneytoft from August to May.
So in the afternoon Stanistreet called again at Ridgmount Gardens. Whether or no Mrs. Nevill Tyson ignored the possibility of passion, she had the largest ideas of the scope and significance of friendship. She made no claims, but she exacted from Louis a multitude of small services for which he was held to be sufficiently repaid in smiles.
As Stanistreet's hansom turned after leaving her at Ridgmount Gardens, he thought he saw some one remarkably like Tyson standing in the shadow of the railings opposite her door. He must have seen them; and but for the delay they would probably have overtaken and so missed him. And Stanistreet kept on saying to himself: No. Women do not love like that.
Why, that's wot 'e came inter the world for to save sinners. Ter save 'em from death an' everlasting 'ell! That's wot Jesus does for sinners." Oh, Molly, Molly, what has he done for fools? He took her to Ridgmount Gardens, and left her at the door of the flat. She was incomprehensible, this little Mrs. Tyson. But up till now his own state of mind had been plain.
He had followed her to the "Criterion"; he had hurried out before the end of the piece, and hung about Ridgmount Gardens till he had seen her homecoming. Stanistreet's immediate departure was a relief to a certain anxiety that he was base enough to feel. And still there remained a vague suspicion and discomfort. He had to begin all over again with her.
They followed slowly in its wake, hemmed in by the rabble that streamed towards Ridgmount Gardens, to lose itself in the black slums of Bloomsbury. On the pavement the reeling girl was swept on with the crowd, still singing her hideous song. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was leaning back now, with her eyes closed, not heeding the ugly pageant. But the scene came back to her in nightmares afterwards.
A month ago he would not have thought so lightly of the matter. One evening, not long after their stormy interview, he turned up at Stanistreet's rooms in Chelsea, much as he had turned up at Ridgmount Gardens after his year's absence. Stanistreet was lying back in a low chair, smoking and thinking. The change in Louis's appearance was still more striking than when they had last met.
He had known many women who were fools, and he had survived their folly. But it seemed that he could not live without this particular little fool. He called the next day at Ridgmount Gardens. Mrs. Nevill Tyson's manner was a little disconcerting. He found her at the piano, singing in her pathetic mezzo-soprano a song that used to he a favorite of Tyson's.
But though Stanistreet was always hanging about Ridgmount Gardens, he was no nearer solving the problem that had perplexed him. And yet his views of women had undergone a change; he was not the same man who had discussed Molly Wilcox in the billiard-room at Thorneytoft three years ago. One thing he noticed which was new. Mrs.
Tyson had taken a flat in Ridgmount Gardens. This, he said, was a good central position and handy for the theatres. At any rate, he could not afford a better one so long as that infernal estate swallowed up two-thirds of his income. It looked as if they meant to make a clean sweep of their past. They began by making a clean sweep of the servants, from the kitchen-maid upwards.
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