*

The fact that Bertha had been vague about her morning engagement--for it
was really unlike her not to seem pleased at the idea of spending the
whole day with him and the little brother--so agonised Percy that he
pretended to have a headache and saw practically nothing of Bertha till
the next day. He said then that he would go to chambers, meet Clifford
at Prince's and come home after lunch and take Bertha out somewhere.
This was to leave her perfectly free, so that she need not alter any
arrangements. He wished to see what she would do.

It was a glorious morning, and Percy felt rather mean and miserable and
unlike the day as he left the house.

Bertha was already dressed, looking deliciously fresh and pink, and
sparkling and fair as the sunshine. A second of acute physical jealousy
made him remark rather bitterly before he left that her hat was a little
bit striking, wasn't it? Upon which she at once, in her good-tempered,
amiable way (only too delighted that he should have noticed anything in
her toilette even to object to it), plucked the white feather out of the
black hat and put a little coat on over her dress, so as to look less
noticeable.

At a quarter past eleven Percy paid his shilling at the gallery, walked
in, looking slowly at the drawings on the walls in the narrow passage
that led to the rooms.

The moment he reached the first door on the left-hand side, which was
open, he saw through it, exactly opposite to him, seated on a sofa,
Bertha, looking up and chattering to Nigel Hillier, who was looking down
in a protecting manner, and listening with great interest to her
conversation.

Neither of them saw him.

The pain of finding one part of the letter true was so startling and
terrible that he dared not look another moment; a second more, and he
might have made a scandal, perhaps for ever after to be regretted, and
possibly entirely groundless.

He walked straight out of the gallery again, and drove to Sloane Street
in a taxi. During the drive he felt extraordinary sensations. He
remembered an occasion when he had been to a dentist as a little boy,
and the strange new suffering it had caused him. Then he thought that
when he got home, he would feel better. Instead of that the sight of the
familiar house was unbearable agony; he could not endure to go into it;
he drove back again to the club of which both he and Nigel were members,
and where Nigel was generally to be found before lunch. There