going
on."

"What was going on?" Mr. Prohack repeated, gazing at her childlike
maternal serious face, whose wistfulness affected him in an
extraordinary way. "What on earth are you insinuating?"

No! It was inconceivable that this pulsating girl perched on the sofa
should be the mother of the mature and independent Charles.

"Charlie's _staying_ at the Grand Babylon Hotel," said Eve, as though
she were saying that Charlie had forged a cheque or blown up the
Cenotaph.

Even the imperturbable man of the world in front of her momentarily
blenched at the news.

"More fool him!" observed Mr. Prohack.

"Yes, and he's got a bedroom and a private sitting-room and a bathroom,
and a room for a secretary--"

"Hence a secretary," Mr. Prohack put in.

"Yes, and a secretary. And he dictates things to the secretary all the
time, and the telephone's always going,--yes, even at this time of
night. He must be spending enormous sums. So of course I hurried back to
tell you."

"You did quite right, my pet," said Mr. Prohack. "A good wife should
share these tit-bits with her husband at the earliest possible moment."

He was really very like what in his more conventional moments he would
have said a woman was like. If Eve had taken the affair lightly he would
without doubt have remonstrated, explaining that such an affair ought by
no means to be taken lightly. But seeing that she took it very
seriously, his instinct was to laugh at it, though in fact he was
himself extremely perturbed by this piece of news, which confirmed, a
hundredfold and in the most startling manner, certain sinister
impressions of his own concerning Charlie's deeds in Glasgow. And he
assumed the gay attitude, not from a desire to reassure his wife, but
from mere contrariness. Positively the strangest husband that ever
lived, and entirely different from normal husbands!

Then he saw tears hanging in Eve's eyes,--tears not of resentment
against his lack of sympathy, tears of bewilderment and perplexity. She
simply did not understand his attitude. And he sat down close by her on
the sofa and solaced her with three kisses. She was singularly
attractive in her alternations of sagacity and helplessness.

"But it's awful," she whimpered. "The boy must be throwing money away at
the rate of twenty or twenty-five pounds a day."

"Very probably," Mr. Prohack agreed.

"Where's he getting it from?" she demanded. "He must be getting it from
somewhere."

"I expec