t her garden, Mr. Paramor still had his, she added quickly: "And
yours, Mr. Paramor--I'm sure it must be looking lovely."

Mr. Paramor drew out a kind of dagger with which he had stabbed some
papers to his desk, and took a letter from the bundle.

"Yes," he said, "it's looking very nice. You'd like to see this, I
expect."

"Bellew v. Bellew and Pendyce" was written at the top. Mrs. Pendyce
stared at those words as though fascinated by their beauty; it was long
before she got beyond them. For the first time the full horror of these
matters pierced the kindly armour that lies between mortals and what they
do not like to think of. Two men and a woman wrangling, fighting,
tearing each other before the eyes of all the world. A woman and two men
stripped of charity and gentleness, of moderation and sympathy-stripped
of all that made life decent and lovable, squabbling like savages before
the eyes of all the world. Two men, and one of them her son, and between
them a woman whom both of them had loved! "Bellew v. Bellew and
Pendyce"! And this would go down to fame in company with the pitiful
stories she had read from time to time with a sort of offended interest;
in company with "Snooks v. Snooks and Stiles," "Horaday v. Horaday,"
"Bethany v. Bethany and Sweetenham." In company with all those cases
where everybody seemed so dreadful, yet where she had often and often
felt so sorry, as if these poor creatures had been fastened in the stocks
by some malignant, loutish spirit, for all that would to come and jeer
at. And horror filled her heart. It was all so mean, and gross, and
common.

The letter contained but a few words from a firm of solicitors confirming
an appointment. She looked up at Mr. Paramor. He stopped pencilling on
his blotting-paper, and said at once:

"I shall be seeing these people myself tomorrow afternoon. I shall do my
best to make them see reason."

She felt from his eyes that he knew what she was suffering, and was even
suffering with her.

"And if--if they won't?"

"Then I shall go on a different tack altogether, and they must look out
for themselves."

Mrs. Pendyce sank back in her chair; she seemed to smell again that smell
of leather and disinfectant, and hear a sound of incessant clicking. She
felt faint, and to disguise that faintness asked at random, "What does
'without prejudice' in this letter mean?"

Mr. Paramor smiled.

"That's an expression we always use," he said. "