d, with the utmost urbanity. "I understand you
perfectly."

He accompanied me to the dining-room where I had left my hat and
umbrella, and to the flat door which he politely opened. When it shut
behind me I felt inclined to batter it open again and to take Judith
by main force from under his nose. But I suppose I am pusillanimous. I
found myself in the street brandishing my umbrella like a flaming sword
and vowing to perform all sorts of Paladin exploits, which I knew in my
heart were futile.

I hailed an omnibus in the Tottenham Court Road, and clambered to the
top, though a slight drizzle was falling. Why I did it I have not
the remotest idea, for I abhor those locomotive engines of exquisite
discomfort. I had no preconceived notion of destination. It was a moving
thing that would carry me away from the Tottenham Court Road, away
from the Rev. Rupert Mainwaring, away from myself. I was the solitary
occupant of the omnibus roof. The rain fell, softly, persistently,
soakingly. I laughed aloud.

I recognised the predestined irony of things that at every corner checks
the course of the ineffectual man.

CHAPTER XX

November 11th.

I wrote Judith a long letter last night, urging her to disregard the
forfeited claims of her husband and to join her life definitely with
mine. I was cynical enough to feel that if such a proceeding annoyed
the Rev. Rupert Mainwaring it would serve him right. The fact of a man's
finding religion and abjuring sack does not in itself exculpate him from
wrongs which he has inflicted on his fellow-creatures in unregenerate
days. Mainwaring deserved some punishment of which he seemed to have had
remarkably little; for, mind you, his sack-cloth and ashes at Hoxton,
although sincerely worn, are not much of a punishment to a man in his
exalted mood. Now, on the contrary, Judith deserved compensation, such
as I alone was prepared to offer her in spite of conventional morality
and the feelings of the Rev. Rupert Mainwaring. Indeed, it seemed to
be the only way of saving Judith from being worried out of her life by
frantic appeals to embrace both himself and Primitive Christianity.
Her position was that of Andromeda. Mine that of an unheroic Perseus,
destined to deliver her from the monster--the monster whose lair is a
little tin mission church in Hoxton.

I wrote the letter in one of those periods of semi-vitality when the
pulses of emotion throb weakly, and sensitiveness is dulled. To-da