s immediately preceding her marriage with Willie Connor.
Presently it cleared. "The whole beginning and end of my present
feelings," she continued, "is that I'm glad the man I once cared for
has won such high distinction, and I'm sorry that such a brave soldier
should be wounded."

I could do nothing else than assure her of my perfect understanding. I
upbraided myself as a monster of indelicacy for my touch of doubt
before dinner; also for a devilish and malicious suspicion that flitted
through my brain while she was cataloguing her possible reasons for
putting on the old evening dress. The thought of Betty's beautiful arm
and the man's bull-neck was a shivering offence. I craved purification.

"If you've finished your coffee," I said, "let us go into the
drawing-room and have some music."

She rose with the impulsiveness of a child told that it can be excused,
and responded startlingly to my thought.

"I think we need it," she said.

In the drawing-room I swung my chair so that I could watch her hands on
the keys. She was a good musician and had the well-taught executant's
certainty and grace of movement. It may be the fancy of an outer
Philistine, but I love to forget the existence of the instrument and to
feel the music coming from the human finger-tips. She found a volume of
Chopin's Nocturnes on the rest. In fact she had left it there a
fortnight before, the last time she had played for me. I am very fond
of Chopin. I am an uneducated fellow and the lyrical mostly appeals to
me both in poetry and in music. Besides, I have understood him better
since I have been a crock. And I loved Betty's sympathetic
interpretation. So I sat there, listening and watching, and I knew that
she was playing for the ease of both our souls. Once more I thanked God
for the great gift of Betty to my crippled life. Peace gathered round
my heart as Betty played.

The raucous buzz of the telephone in the corner of the room knocked the
music to shatters. I cried out impatiently. It was the fault of that
giant of ineptitude Marigold and his incompetent satellites, whose duty
it was to keep all upstairs extensions turned off and receive calls
below. Only two months before I had been the victim of their culpable
neglect, when I was forced to have an altercation with a man at
Harrod's Stores, who seemed pained because I declined to take an
interest in some idiotic remark he was making about fish.

"I'll strangle Marigold with my own hands