his life words failed Aristide Pujol. He
stood in front of the virtuous harridan, his lips working, his fingers
convulsively clutching the air.

"You--you--you--you naughty woman!" he gasped, and, sweeping her away
from the doorway of his box of a sitting-room, he rushed up to his
tinier bedroom and in furious haste packed his portmanteau.

"I would rather die than sleep another night beneath your slanderous
roof," he cried at the foot of the stairs. "Here is more than your
week's money." He flung a couple of gold coins on the floor and dashed
out into the darkness and the rain.

He hammered at Anne Honeywood's door. She opened it in some alarm.

"You?--but----" she stammered.

"I have come," said he, dumping his portmanteau in the passage, "to take
you and Jean away from this abomination of a place. It is a Tophet
reserved for those who are not good enough for hell. In hell there is
dignity, _que diable!_ Here there is none. I know what you have
suffered. I know how they insult you. I know what they say. You cannot
stay one more night here. Pack up all your things. Pack up all Jean's
things. I have my valise here. I walk to St. Albans and I come back for
you in an automobile. You lock up the door. I tell the policeman to
guard the cottage. You come with me. We take a train to London. You and
Jean will stay at a hotel. I will go to my good friend who saved me
from Madam Gougasse. After that we will think."

"That's just like you," she said, smiling in spite of her trouble, "you
act first and think afterwards. Unfortunately I'm in the habit of doing
the reverse."

"But it's I who am doing all the thinking for you. I have thought till
my brain is red hot." He laughed in his luminous and excited way, and,
seizing both her hands, kissed them one after the other. "There!" said
he, "be ready by the time I return. Do not hesitate. Do not look back.
Remember Lot's wife!" He flourished his hat and was gone like a flash
into the heavy rain and darkness of the December evening. Anne cried
after him, but he too remembering Lot's wife would not turn. He marched
on buoyantly, heedless of the wet and the squirting mud from unseen
puddles. It was an adventure such as he loved. It was a knightly errand,
_parbleu!_ Was he not delivering a beautiful lady from the dragon of
calumny? And in an automobile, too! His imagination fondled the idea.

At a garage in St. Albans he readily found a car for hire. He was all
for driving it him