Charles moved to the central table, and stood with one hand resting on it. “Grogan, would you have had me live a lifetime of pretense? Is our age not full enough as it is of a mealy-mouthed hypocrisy, an adulation of all that is false in our natures? Would you have had me add to that?”

“I would have had you think twice before you embroiled that innocent girl in your pursuit of self-knowledge.”

“But once that knowledge is granted us, can we escape its dictates? However repugnant their consequences?”

The doctor looked away with a steely little grimace. Charles saw that he was huffed and nervous; and really at a loss, after the first commination, how to deal with this monstrous affront to provincial convention. There was indeed a struggle in progress between the Grogan who had lived now for a quarter of a century in Lyme and the Grogan who had seen the world. There were other things: his liking for Charles, his private opinion—not very far removed from Sir Robert’s—that Ernestina was a pretty little thing, but a shallow little thing; there was even an event long buried in his own past whose exact nature need not be revealed beyond that it made his reference to lust a good deal less impersonal than he had made it seem. His tone remained reproving; but he sidestepped the moral question he had been asked.

“I am a doctor, Smithson. I know only one overriding law. All suffering is evil. It may also be necessary. That does not alter its fundamental nature.”

“I don’t see where good is to spring from, if it is not out of that evil. How can one build a better self unless on the ruins of the old?”

“And the ruins of that poor young creature across the way?”

“It is better she suffers once, to be free of me, than…” he fell silent.

“Ah. You are sure of that, are you?” Charles said nothing. The doctor stared down at the street. “You have committed a crime. Your punishment will be to remember it all your life. So don’t give yourself absolution yet. Only death will give you that.” He took off his glasses, and polished them on a green silk handkerchief. There was a long pause, a very long pause; and at the end of it his voice, though still reproving, was milder.

“You will marry the other?”

Charles breathed a metaphorical sigh of relief. As soon as Grogan had come into the room he had known that his previous self-assertions—that he was indifferent to the opinion of a mere bathing-place doctor—were hollow. There was a humanity in the Irishman Charles greatly respected; in a way Grogan stood for all he respected. He knew he could not expect a full remission of sins; but it was enough to sense that total excommunication was not to be his lot.

“That is my most sincere intent.”

“She knows? You have told her?”

“Yes.”

“And she has accepted your offer, of course?”

“I have every reason to believe so.” He explained the circumstances of Sam’s errand that morning.

The little doctor turned to face him.

“Smithson, I know you are not vicious. I know you would not have done what you have unless you believed the girl’s own account of her extraordinary behavior. But I warn you that a doubt must remain. And such a doubt as must cast a shadow over any future protection you extend to her.”

“I have taken that into consideration.” Charles risked a thin smile. “As I have the cloud of obfuscating cant our sex talks about women. They are to sit, are they not, like so many articles in a shop and to let us men walk in and tarn them over and point at this one or that one—she takes my fancy. If they allow this, we call them decent, respectable, modest. But when one of these articles has the impertinence to speak up for herself—”

“She has done rather more than that, I gather.”

Charles rode the rebuke. “She has done what is almost a commonplace in high society. I do not know why the countless wives in that milieu who dishonor their marriage vows are to be granted exculpation, while… besides, I am far more to blame. She merely sent me her address. I was perfectly free to avoid the consequences of going to it.”

The doctor threw him a mute little glance. Honesty, now, he had to admit. He resumed his stare down at the street. After a few moments he spoke, much more in his old manner and voice.

“Perhaps I am growing old. I know such breaches of trust as yours are becoming so commonplace that to be shocked by them is to pronounce oneself an old fogey. But I will tell you what bothers me. I share your distaste for cant, whether it be of the religious or the legal variety. The law has always seemed to me an ass, and a great part of religion very little better. I do not attack you on those grounds, I will not attack you on any grounds. I will merely give you my opinion. It is this. You believe yourself to belong to a rational and scientific elect. No, no, I know what you would say, you are not so vain. So be it. Nonetheless, you wish to belong to that elect. I do not blame you for that. I have held the same wish myself all my life. But I beg you to remember one thing, Smithson. All through human history the elect have made their cases for election. But Time allows only one plea.” The doctor replaced his glasses and turned on Charles. “It is this. That the elect, whatever the particular grounds they advance for their cause, have introduced a finer and fairer morality into this dark world. If they fail that test, then they become no more than despots, sultans, mere seekers after their own pleasure and power. In short, mere victims of their own baser desires. I think you understand what I am driving at—and its especial relevance to yourself from this unhappy day on. If you become a better and a more generous human being, you may be forgiven. But if you become more selfish… you are doubly damned.”

Charles looked down from those exacting eyes. “Though far less cogently, my own conscience had already said as much.”

“Then amen. Jacta alea est.” He picked up his hat and bag from the table and went to the door. But there he hesitated—then held out his hand. “I wish you well on your march away from the Rubicon.”

Charles grasped the proffered hand, almost as if he were drowning. He tried to say something, but failed. There was a moment of stronger pressure from Grogan’s fingers, then he turned and opened the door. He looked back, a glint in his eyes.

“And if you do not leave here within the hour I shall be back with the largest horsewhip I can find.”

Charles stiffened at that. But the glint remained. Charles swallowed a painful smile and bowed his head in assent. The door closed.

He was left alone with his medicine.

In fairness to Charles it must be said that he sent to find Sam before he left the White Lion. But the servant was not in the taproom or the stables. Charles guessed indeed where he was. He could not send there; and thus he left Lyme without seeing him again. He got into his four-wheeler in the yard, and promptly drew down the blinds. Two hearse-like miles passed before he opened them again, and let the slanting evening sunlight, for it was now five o’clock, brighten the dingy paintwork and upholstery of the carriage.

It did not immediately brighten Charles’s spirits. Yet gradually, as he continued to draw away from Lyme, he felt as if a burden had been lifted off his shoulders; a defeat suffered, and yet he had survived it. Grogan’s solemn warning—that the rest of his life must be lived in proof of the justice of what he had done—he accepted. But among the rich green fields and May hedgerows of the Devon countryside it was difficult not to see the future as fertile—a new life lay ahead of him, great challenges, but he would rise to them. His guilt seemed almost beneficial: its expiation gave his life its hitherto lacking purpose.