The action of sitting reduces tragedy to comedy at once,--this was one of Napoleon's maxims.
Then he opened his cigarette case and offered it to Geoffrey. This, too, was symbolic. Geoffrey took a cigarette mechanically, and sucked it between his lips, unlighted.
"Geoffrey," said his friend very quietly, "let us try to put these women and all their rottenness out of our heads. We will try to talk this over decently."
Geoffrey was so stunned by the shock of what he had just learned that he had thought of nothing else. Now, all of a sudden he remembered that he owed serious explanations to his friend.
"Reggie," he said dully, "I'm most awfully sorry. I had never dreamed of this. I was good pals with Yaé because of you. I never dreamed of making love to her. You know how I love my wife. She must have been mad to think of me like that. Besides," he added sheepishly, "nothing actually happened."
"I'm sure I don't care what actually happened or did not happen. Damn actual facts. They distort the truth. They are at the bottom of every injustice. What actually happened never matters. It is the picture which sticks in one's brain. True or false, it sticks just the same; and suddenly or slowly it alters every thing. But I can wipe up my own mess, I think. It is much more serious with you than with me, Geoffrey. She has bruised my heel, but she has broken your head. No, don't protest, for Heaven's sake! I am not interested."
"Then what she says is absolutely true?" said Geoffrey, lighting his cigarette at last, and throwing the match aside as if it were Hope. "For a whole year I have been living on prostitutes' earnings. I am no better than those awful _ponces_ in Leicester Square, who can be flogged if they are caught, and serve them right too. And all that filthy Yoshiwara, it belongs to Asako, to my sweet innocent little girl, just as Brandan belongs to my father; and with all this filthy money we have been buying comforts and clothes and curios and rubbish."
Reggie was pouring out whiskies and sodas, two strong ones. Geoffrey gulped down his drink, and then proceeded with his lamentation:
"I understand it all now. Everybody knew. The secrecy and the mystery. Even at my wedding they were saying, 'Don't go to Japan, don't go.' They must have all known even then. And then those damned Fujinami, so anxious to be civil for the beastly money's sake, and yet hiding everything and lying all the time. And you knew, and the Ambassador, and Count Saito, and the servants too--always whispering and laughing behind our backs. But you, Reggie, you were my friend, you ought to have told me."