Wingate had recovered from his first stupor.  His eyes were very bright, he was filled with the sense of wonderful happenings.

“Oh, I’ll be as hospitable as you like,” he assured her.  “You shan’t have any cause to reproach me so far as that is concerned.  This easy-chair, please.  It is by far the most comfortable one.  And now some cushions,” he added, slipping them behind her.  “The cigarettes are here, and I have some excellent hock.  Just half a glass?  Good!  Miss Baldwin has been praising my sandwiches.  You’ll have one, won’t you?”

She sighed with content, almost with happiness.  The strained look had gone from her face.  She took off her hat and he laid it upon the table.

“You are very good, very kind indeed,” she murmured.  “And yet not so kind as I would like to be.”

He came and stood by her side.  She was eating one of the sandwiches and had already tasted the wine.  Somehow, he knew quite well that she had had no dinner.

“I want you to understand,” he began, “that you are free to tell me what has happened to-night or not—­just as you please.  Don’t feel obliged to explain, I’ll be quite frank, I am a curious person as regards you.  I want to know—­everything.  I should like to know how it was that you were unable to come to dinner or join us at the theatre to-night.  I should like to know what has brought you out of your house to an hotel at midnight—­but don’t tell me unless you want to.”

“I do want to,” she assured him.  “I want to tell you everything.  I think—­somehow I almost feel that you have the right to know.”

“Cultivate that feeling,” he begged her.  “I like it.”

She smiled, a wan little smile that passed very soon.  Her face grew sad again.  She was thinking.

“I dare say you can guess,” she began presently, “something of what my daily life is like when my husband is in town.  It is little less than torture, especially since he became mixed up with Mr. Phipps, that horrible person Martin, and their friends.”

“Abominable!” Wingate muttered.

“He is all the while trying to induce me to receive their women friends,” she continued.  “I need not tell you that I have refused, as I always should refuse.”

“Naturally!”

“To-night, however,” she went on, “he has surpassed himself.  First of all he telephoned to say that he was bringing home friends for dinner, and if I had any other engagement he requested me to cancel it.  As you know, I did so.  Notwithstanding his message, he did not arrive at the house until eleven o’clock, barely an hour ago.”

“And kept you waiting all that time?”

“That is nothing.  Let me explain something before I conclude.  Before the war I had an Austrian maid, a woman whom I turned out of the house, and whom my husband at that time did not dare to ask me to reinstate.  He had not then spent quite the whole of my fortune.  Besides an undoubted intrigue with my husband, I heard afterwards that she only escaped imprisonment as a spy by leaving the country hurriedly just before war was declared.  Tonight, my husband, having kept me waiting three hours while he dined with her in Soho, brought her back to the house, announcing that he had engaged her as his secretary.”