er that I had but a qualified
liking for him. I said with just a suspicion of jeering tone:

"Of course. I told you last night on the road that it was a farce we
were engaged in."

He made the little parlour resound to its foundations with a note of
anger positively sepulchral in its depth of tone. "Farce be hanged!
She has bolted with my wife's brother, Captain Anthony." This outburst
was followed by complete subsidence. He faltered miserably as he added
from force of habit: "The son of the poet, you know."

A silence fell. Fyne's several expressions were so many examples of
varied consistency. This was the discomfiture of solemnity. My
interest of course was revived.

"But hold on," I said. "They didn't go together. Is it a suspicion or
does she actually say that..."

"She has gone after him," stated Fyne in comminatory tones. "By
previous arrangement. She confesses that much."

He added that it was very shocking. I asked him whether he should have
preferred them going off together; and on what ground he based that
preference. This was sheer fun for me in regard of the fact that Fyne's
too was a runaway match, which even got into the papers in its time,
because the late indignant poet had no discretion and sought to avenge
this outrage publicly in some absurd way before a bewigged judge. The
dejected gesture of little Fyne's hand disarmed my mocking mood. But I
could not help expressing my surprise that Mrs Fyne had not detected at
once what was brewing. Women were supposed to have an unerring eye.

He told me that his wife had been very much engaged in a certain work.
I had always wondered how she occupied her time. It was in writing.
Like her husband she too published a little book. Much later on I came
upon it. It had nothing to do with pedestrianism. It was a sort of
hand-book for women with grievances (and all women had them), a sort of
compendious theory and practice of feminine free morality. It made you
laugh at its transparent simplicity. But that authorship was revealed
to me much later. I didn't of course ask Fyne what work his wife was
engaged on; but I marvelled to myself at her complete ignorance of the
world, of her own sex and of the other kind of sinners. Yet, where
could she have got any experience? Her father had kept her strictly
cloistered. Marriage with Fyne was certainly a change but only to
another kind of claustration. You may tell me that the ordinary powers