lterer!'

"It was rather dreadful, hearing the poor chap. You see, what was the
matter with him was, being the frightfully clean, intensely refined sort
of chap he is, appalling horror at being thought, by his wife who knew
him so well, capable of what was so repulsive to his mind. He loathed
the very sound of the word that was used against him. Obscene, he kept
on calling it. He was like a man fallen in a mire and plucking at the
filthy stuff all over him and reeking of it and not able to eat or sleep
or think or do anything but go mad with it. That was how it got him.
Like that.

"Next morning--that's this morning, you understand--he was a little more
normal, able to realise things a bit, I mean: thanked my wife for
putting him up and hoped he hadn't been horribly rude or anything last
night. More normal, you see: still in a panic fever to be off and state
at the Registrar's that he was going to defend the action; but normal
enough for me to see it was all right for him to go straight on home
immediately after and tell the girl what she had to do and all that. I
told him, by the way, that it would pretty well have to come out now,
ultimately, who the child's father was: the girl would practically have
to give that up in the end to clear him. You know, I told him that in
the cab going along down. He ground his teeth over it. It was horrible
to hear him. He said he'd kill the chap if he could ever discover him;
ground his teeth and said he'd kill him, now--after this.

"Well, he got through his business about twelve--just a formality, you
know, declaring his intention to defend. Then a thing happened. Can't
think now what it meant. We were waiting for a cab near the Law Courts.
I had his bag. He was going straight on to the station. A cab was just
pulling in when a man came up, an ordinary enough looking cove, tall
chap, and touched Sabre and said, 'Mr. Sabre?' Sabre said, 'Yes' and the
chap said very civilly, 'Might I speak to you a minute, sir?'

"They went aside. I wasn't looking at them. I was watching a chap on a
bike tumble off in front of a motor bus, near as a toucher run over.
Suddenly some one shoved past me and there was old Sabre getting into
the cab with this chap who had come up to him. I said, 'Hullo! Hullo,
are you off?'

"We'd arranged, d'you see, to part there. I had to get back to my
chambers. He turned round on me a face grey as ashes, absolutely dead
grey. I'd never seen such a colour in a man'