n
resumed her spectacles and her long needle.

"Yes, of course."

Here he burst into the whole story, into the middle of it, continuing to
the end, and then going back to the commencement. He left out nothing,
and nobody, except Lady Sophia Entwistle.

"I see," she observed. "And you've never said a word?"

"Not a word."

"If I were you I should still keep perfectly silent about it," she
almost whispered persuasively. "It'll be just as well. If I were you, I
shouldn't worry myself. I can quite understand how it happened, and I'm
glad you've told me. But don't worry. You've been exciting yourself
these last two or three days. I thought it was about my money business,
but I see it wasn't. At least that may have brought it on, like. Now the
best thing you can do is to forget it."

She did not believe him! She simply discredited the whole story; and,
told in Werter Road, like that, the story did sound fantastic; it did
come very near to passing belief. She had always noticed a certain
queerness in her husband. His sudden gaieties about a tint in the sky or
the gesture of a horse in the street, for example, were most uncanny.
And he had peculiar absences of mind that she could never account for.
She was sure that he must have been a very bad valet. However, she did
not marry him for a valet, but for a husband; and she was satisfied with
her bargain. What if he did suffer under a delusion? The exposure of
that delusion merely crystallized into a definite shape her vague
suspicions concerning his mentality. Besides, it was a harmless
delusion. And it explained things. It explained, among other things, why
he had gone to stay at the Grand Babylon Hotel. That must have been the
inception of the delusion. She was glad to know the worst.

She adored him more than ever.

There was a silence.

"No," she repeated, in the most matter-of-fact tone, "I should say
nothing, in your place. I should forget it."

"You would?" He drummed on the table.

"I should! And whatever you do, don't worry." Her accents were the
coaxing accents of a nurse with a child--or with a lunatic.

He perceived now with the utmost clearness that she did not believe a
word of what he had said, and that in her magnificent and calm sagacity
she was only trying to humour him. He had expected to disturb her soul
to its profoundest depths; he had expected that they would sit up half
the night discussing the situation. And lo!--"I should forget it,"
indu