Again she seemed to hear the incessant clicking, to smell leather and disinfectant, to see those words, “Bellew v.  Bellew and, Pendyce.”

She held out her hand.

Mr. Paramor took it in his own and looked at the floor.

“Good-bye,” he said-"good-bye.  What’s your address—­Green’s Hotel?  I’ll come and tell you what I do.  I know—­I know!”

Mrs. Pendyce, on whom those words “I know—­I know!” had a strange, emotionalising effect, as though no one had ever known before, went away with quivering lips.  In her life no one had ever “known”—­not indeed that she could or would complain of such a trifle, but the fact remained.  And at this moment, oddly, she thought of her husband, and wondered what he was doing, and felt sorry for him.

But Mr. Paramor went back to his seat and stared at what he had written on his blotting paper.  It ran thus: 

     “We stand on our petty rights here,
     And our potty dignity there;
     We make no allowance for others,
     They make no allowance for us;
     We catch hold of them by the ear,
     They grab hold of us by the hair
     The result is a bit of a muddle
     That ends in a bit of a fuss.”

He saw that it neither rhymed nor scanned, and with a grave face he tore it up.

Again Mrs. Pendyce told her cabman to drive slowly, and again he drove her faster than usual; yet that drive to Chelsea seemed to last for ever, and interminable were the turnings which the cabman took, each one shorter than the last, as if he had resolved to see how much his horse’s mouth could bear.

‘Poor thing!’ thought Mrs. Pendyce; ’its mouth must be so sore, and it’s quite unnecessary.’  She put her hand up through the trap.  “Please take me in a straight line.  I don’t like corners.”

The cabman obeyed.  It worried him terribly to take one corner instead of the six he had purposed on his way; and when she asked him his fare, he charged her a shilling extra for the distance he had saved by going straight.  Mrs. Pendyce paid it, knowing no better, and gave him sixpence over, thinking it might benefit the horse; and the cabman, touching his hat, said: 

“Thank you, my lady,” for to say “my lady” was his principle when he received eighteen pence above his fare.

Mrs. Pendyce stood quite a minute on the pavement, stroking the horse’s nose and thinking: 

‘I must go in; it’s silly to come all this way and not go in!’

But her heart beat so that she could hardly swallow.

At last she rang.

Mrs. Bellew was seated on the sofa in her little drawing-room whistling to a canary in the open window.  In the affairs of men there is an irony constant and deep, mingled with the very springs of life.  The expectations of Mrs. Pendyce, those timid apprehensions of this meeting which had racked her all the way, were lamentably unfulfilled.  She had rehearsed the scene ever since it came into her head; the reality seemed unfamiliar.  She felt no nervousness and no hostility, only a sort of painful interest and admiration.  And how could this or any other woman help falling in love with George?