He went out.  Dr Porhoet, his hands behind his back, began to walk up and down the room.  At last he turned to Susie.

‘There is one thing that puzzles me,’ he said.  ‘Why did he marry her?’

‘You heard what Arthur said,’ answered Susie bitterly.  ’Whatever happened, he would have taken her back.  The other man knew that he could only bind her to him securely by going through the ceremonies of marriage.’

Dr Porhoet shrugged his shoulders, and presently he left her.  When Susie was alone she began to weep broken-heartedly, not for herself, but because Arthur suffered an agony that was hardly endurable.

11

Arthur went back to London next day.

Susie felt it impossible any longer to stay in the deserted studio, and accepted a friend’s invitation to spend the winter in Italy.  The good Dr Porhoet remained in Paris with his books and his occult studies.

Susie travelled slowly through Tuscany and Umbria.  Margaret had not written to her, and Susie, on leaving Paris, had sent her friend’s belongings to an address from which she knew they would eventually be forwarded.  She could not bring herself to write.  In answer to a note announcing her change of plans, Arthur wrote briefly that he had much work to do and was delivering a new course of lectures at St. Luke’s; he had lately been appointed visiting surgeon to another hospital, and his private practice was increasing.  He did not mention Margaret.  His letter was abrupt, formal, and constrained.  Susie, reading it for the tenth time, could make little of it.  She saw that he wrote only from civility, without interest; and there was nothing to indicate his state of mind.  Susie and her companion had made up their minds to pass some weeks in Rome; and here, to her astonishment, Susie had news of Haddo and his wife.  It appeared that they had spent some time there, and the little English circle was talking still of their eccentricities.  They travelled in some state, with a courier and a suite of servants; they had taken a carriage and were in the habit of driving every afternoon on the Pincio.  Haddo had excited attention by the extravagance of his costume, and Margaret by her beauty; she was to be seen in her box at the opera every night, and her diamonds were the envy of all beholders.  Though people had laughed a good deal at Haddo’s pretentiousness, and been exasperated by his arrogance, they could not fail to be impressed by his obvious wealth.  But finally the pair had disappeared suddenly without saying a word to anybody.  A good many bills remained unpaid, but these, Susie learnt, had been settled later.  It was reported that they were now in Monte Carlo.

‘Did they seem happy?’ Susie asked the gossiping friend who gave her this scanty information.

’I think so.  After all, Mrs Haddo has almost everything that a woman can want, riches, beauty, nice clothes, jewels.  She would be very unreasonable not to be happy.’