We trooped into the anteroom, under the full lights, and there we saw how beautiful the woman was.  She stood up in the middle of us all, sometimes choking with crying, then hard and proud, and then holding out her arms to the Senior Subaltern.  It was like the fourth act of a tragedy.  She told us how the Senior Subaltern had married her when he was Home on leave eighteen months before; and she seemed to know all that we knew, and more too, of his people and his past life.  He was white and ashy gray, trying now and again to break into the torrent of her words; and we, noting how lovely she was and what a criminal he looked, esteemed him a beast of the worst kind.  We felt sorry for him, though.

I shall never forget the indictment of the Senior Subaltern by his wife.  Nor will he.  It was so sudden, rushing out of the dark, unannounced, into our dull lives.  The Captains’ wives stood back; but their eyes were alight, and you could see that they had already convicted and sentenced the Senior Subaltern.  The Colonel seemed five years older.  One Major was shading his eyes with his hand and watching the woman from underneath it.  Another was chewing his mustache and smiling quietly as if he were witnessing a play.  Full in the open space in the center, by the whist tables, the Senior Subaltern’s terrier was hunting for fleas.  I remember all this as clearly as though a photograph were in my hand.  I remember the look of horror on the Senior Subaltern’s face.  It was rather like seeing a man hanged; but much more interesting.  Finally, the woman wound up by saying that the Senior Subaltern carried a double F.M. in tattoo on his left shoulder.  We all knew that, and to our innocent minds it seemed to clinch the matter.  But one of the Bachelor Majors said very politely:  “I presume that your marriage certificate would be more to the purpose?”

That roused the woman.  She stood up and sneered at the Senior Subaltern for a cur, and abused the Major and the Colonel and all the rest.  Then she wept, and then she pulled a paper from her breast, saying imperially:  “Take that!  And let my husband—­my lawfully wedded husband—­read it aloud—­if he dare!”

There was a hush, and the men looked into each other’s eyes as the Senior Subaltern came forward in a dazed and dizzy way, and took the paper.  We were wondering, as we stared, whether there was anything against any one of us that might turn up later on.  The Senior Subaltern’s throat was dry; but, as he ran his eye over the paper, he broke out into a hoarse cackle of relief, and said to the woman:  “You young blackguard!”

But the woman had fled through a door, and on the paper was written:  “This is to certify that I, The Worm, have paid in full my debts to the Senior Subaltern, and, further, that the Senior Subaltern is my debtor, by agreement on the 23d of February, as by the Mess attested, to the extent of one month’s Captain’s pay, in the lawful currency of the India Empire.”