oss the road,
unmistakable in the lamplight, and had she only looked out of her window
after the light in his was quenched, she would surely have told herself
that good Major Benjy had gone to bed. But good Major Benjy, on ocular
evidence, she now knew to have done nothing of the kind: he had gone
across to see Captain Puffin.... He was not good.

She grasped the situation in its hideous entirety. She had been deceived
and hoodwinked. Major Benjy never went to bed early at all: on alternate
nights he went and sat with Captain Puffin. And Captain Puffin, she
could not but tell herself, sat up on the other set of alternate nights
with the Major, for it had not escaped her observation that when the
Major seemed to be sitting up, the Captain seemed to have gone to bed.
Instantly, with strong conviction, she suspected orgies. It remained to
be seen (and she would remain to see it) to what hour these orgies were
kept up.

About eleven o'clock a little mist had begun to form in the street,
obscuring the complete clarity of her view, but through it there still
shone the light from behind Captain Puffin's red blind, and the mist was
not so thick as to be able wholly to obscure the figure of Major Flint
when he should pass below the gas lamp again into his house. But no such
figure passed. Did he then work at his diaries every evening? And what
price, to put it vulgarly, Roman roads?

Every moment her sense of being deceived grew blacker, and every moment
her curiosity as to what they were doing became more unbearable. After a
spasm of tactical thought she glided back into her house from the
garden-room, and, taking an envelope in her hand, so that she might, if
detected, say that she was going down to the letter-box at the corner to
catch the early post, she unbolted her door and let herself out. She
crossed the street and tip-toed along the pavement to where the red
light from Captain Puffin's window shone like a blurred danger-signal
through the mist.

From inside came a loud duet of familiar voices: sometimes they spoke
singly, sometimes together. But she could not catch the words: they
sounded blurred and indistinct, and she told herself that she was very
glad that she could not hear what they said, for that would have seemed
like eaves-dropping. The voices sounded angry. Was there another duel
pending? And what was it about this time?

Quite suddenly, from so close at hand that she positively leaped off the
pavement i