“Why not?”

“It would be scarcely dignified.”

“On account of Dale?”

“Precisely.”

There was another pause, during which I lit another cigarette.  When I looked up I saw great tears rolling down her cheeks.  A weeping woman always makes me nervous.  You never know what she is going to do next.  Safety lies in checking the tears—­in administering a tonic.  Still, her wish to retain me was very touching.  I rose and stood before her by the mantelpiece.

“You can’t have your pudding and eat it too,” said I.

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t have Captain Vauvenarde for your husband, Dale for your cavaliere servente, and myself for your guide, philosopher and friend all at the same time.”

“Which would you advise me to give up?”

“That’s obvious.  Give up Dale.”

She uttered a sound midway between a sob and a laugh, and said, as it seemed, ironically: 

“Would you take his place?”

Somewhat ironically, too, I replied, “A crock, my dear lady, with one foot in the grave has no business to put the other into the Pays du Tendre.”

But all the same I had an absurd desire to take her at her word, not for the sake of constituting myself her amant en titre, but so as to dispossess the poor boy who was clamouring wildly for her among his mother’s snuffy colleagues in Berlin.

“That’s another reason why I shrink from your going in search of my husband,” she said, dabbing her eyes.  “Your ill-health.”

“I shall have to go abroad out of this dreadful climate in any case.  Doctor’s orders.  And I might just as well travel about with an object in view as idle in Monte Carlo or Egypt.”

“But you might die!” she cried; and her tone touched my heart.

“I’ve got to,” I said, as gently as I could; and the moment the words passed my lips I regretted them.

She turned a terrified look on me and seized me by the arms.

“Is it as bad as that?  Why haven’t you told me?”

I lifted my arms to her shoulders and shook my head and smiled into her eyes.  They seemed true, honest eyes, with a world of pain behind them.  If I had not regarded myself as the gentleman in the Greek Tragedy walking straight to my certain doom, and therefore holding myself aloof from such vain things, I should have yielded to the temptation and kissed her there and then.  And then goodness knows what would have happened.

As it was it was bad enough.  For, as we stood holding on to each other’s shoulders in a ridiculous and compromising attitude, the door opened and Dale Kynnersley burst, unannounced, into the room.  He paused on the threshold and gaped at us, open-mouthed.

CHAPTER IX

We sprang apart, for all the world like a guilty pair surprised.  Luckily the room was in its normal dim state of illumination, so that to one suddenly entering, the expression on our faces was not clearly visible; on the other hand, the subdued light gave a romantic setting to the abominable situation.