repeat Rose Waterford's parting reference
to a girl from a tea-shop. I lied.

"She didn't say anything about his going with anyone?"

"No."

"That's all I wanted to know."

I was a little puzzled, but at all events I understood that I
might now take my leave. When I shook hands with Mrs.
Strickland I told her that if I could be of any use to her I
should be very glad. She smiled wanly.

"Thank you so much. I don't know that anybody can do anything
for me."

Too shy to express my sympathy, I turned to say good-bye to
the Colonel. He did not take my hand.

"I'm just coming. If you're walking up Victoria Street,
I'll come along with you."

"All right," I said. "Come on."

Chapter IX

"This is a terrible thing," he said, the moment we got out
into the street.

I realised that he had come away with me in order to discuss
once more what he had been already discussing for hours with
his sister-in-law.

"We don't know who the woman is, you know," he said. "All we
know is that the blackguard's gone to Paris."

"I thought they got on so well."

"So they did. Why, just before you came in Amy said they'd
never had a quarrel in the whole of their married life.
You know Amy. There never was a better woman in the world."

Since these confidences were thrust on me, I saw no harm in
asking a few questions.

"But do you mean to say she suspected nothing?"

"Nothing. He spent August with her and the children in Norfolk.
He was just the same as he'd always been. We went
down for two or three days, my wife and I, and I played golf
with him. He came back to town in September to let his
partner go away, and Amy stayed on in the country.
They'd taken a house for six weeks, and at the end of her tenancy
she wrote to tell him on which day she was arriving in London.
He answered from Paris. He said he'd made up his mind not to
live with her any more."

"What explanation did he give?"

"My dear fellow, he gave no explanation. I've seen the
letter. It wasn't more than ten lines."

"But that's extraordinary."

We happened then to cross the street, and the traffic
prevented us from speaking. What Colonel MacAndrew had told
me seemed very improbable, and I suspected that Mrs.
Strickland, for reasons of her own, had concealed from him
some part of the facts. It was clear that a man after
seventeen years of wedlock did not leave his wife without
certain occurrences which must have led her to su