“All that I feared,” he was now all apology, “is that his life here would continue what he calls the shame and humiliation of his prison experiences, where I fear he lost a great deal of his self-­respect and dignity, his belief in himself. . . . He says, Mrs. Vaisey, that ‘terrible things’ happened to him behind bars . . . I have not listened to what happened because I felt it would not be to either of our advantages.”

“Advantage?” She was shocked by the use of this word. She scowled, then went on:

“But don’t you think you should have listened?” she asked with some heat. “After all to whom could he turn but his own brother . . . I mean after all whom could he unburden himself to but you?”

Vance stared at her lengthily.

“He did not ask to be unburdened,” he went on. “He simply told me prison had . . . well . . . unmanned him I think the word was . . . That he had been used.”

The last word had slipped out without his wishing it to, and immediately he had betrayed to her how much more he was leaving out in the background of their quarrel.

“There!” she cried. “You see he does need someone to unburden to . . . And you are the one naturally he must go to . . . Of course . . .”

“But I feel, you see,” he made a last attempt now to get her to understand his point and the meaning of his call, “that if he goes on working here, though he is happy, you say, in his post, it will only add to his feeling of . . .”

“. . . being used!” Mrs. Vaisey immediately poured him a cup of coffee on saying this and handed it to him.

“To tell the truth, Mrs. Vaisey, I don’t know what I think now.”

He was close to tears.

“I don’t suppose for a minute that Sidney thinks he will be in what you call his ‘post’ forever,” Mrs. Vaisey went on. “But there is one person I am afraid who expects him to stay forever . . .”

“I see,” Vance could barely get these words out.

“Gareth expects him to remain permanently.”

A look of blinding displeasure crossed Vance’s face.

“Their relationship is that successful?” he inquired huskily.

“I’ve never seen a relationship . . . so beautiful,” she triumphed over him now. “Your brother has already worked a miracle on the boy . . . Gareth was dying until Sidney came.”

All Vance’s planned speech, argument, his fulmination and judgment were ground to powder by this statement.

“I think it would be a crime now to keep them apart!” she pressed even further now, although she saw her enemy was crushed.