Suddenly he thrust his hand into his jacket and pulled out the letters he had brought from the British Post Office.

“And apart from that, you made a mistake in reckoning on my sensitiveness.”

“Honestly, I don’t know what you mean by that,” she said, with frigid calm.

“Yes, you do.  You thought I wouldn’t follow you to England because I should shrink from facing my mother, perhaps, and my wife’s relatives, and all the people who know what I’ve done.  I don’t shrink from meeting any one, and I’ll prove it to you.”

He pulled a letter out of its envelope.

“This is from Beatrice Daventry.  In it she tells me a piece of news.”  (He glanced quickly over the sheets.) “My wife has got tired of leading a religious life and has left the Sisterhood in which she was, and gone to live in London.  Here it is:  ’Rosamund is living once more in Great Cumberland Place with my guardian.  She never goes into society, but otherwise she is leading an ordinary life.  I am quite sure she will never go back to Liverpool.’—­So if I go to London I may run across my wife any day.  Why not?”

“You wife has left the Sisterhood!” said Mrs. Clarke slowly, forcing a sound of surprise into her husky voice.

“I’ve just told you so.  You and I may meet her in London.  If we do, I should think she’ll be hard put to it to recognize me.  Now put on your things and we’ll be off.”

“I shall not go out to-night.  I intend——­”

She paused.

“What do you intend?”

“I don’t mean ever to go to those rooms again.”

“Indeed.  Why not?” he asked, with cold irony.

“I loathe them.”

“You found them.  You chose the furniture for them.  Your perfect taste made them what they are.”

“I tell you I loathe them!” she repeated violently.

“We’ll change them, then.  We can easily find some others that will do just as well.”

“Don’t you understand that I loathe them because I meet you in them?”

“I understood that a good while ago.”

“And yet you—­”

“My dear!” he interrupted her.  “Didn’t I tell you you had destroyed me?  The man I was might have bothered about trifles of that kind, the man I am simply doesn’t recognize them.  Jimmy hates me too, but I haven’t done with Jimmy yet, nevertheless.”

“You shall never meet Jimmy again.  I shall prevent it.”

“How can you?”

“You’re not fit to be with him.”

“But you have molded me into what I am.  He must get accustomed to his own mother’s handiwork.”

“Jimmy can’t bear you.  He told me so when he was last here.  He detests you.”

“Ah!” said Dion, with sudden savagery, springing up from his chair.  “So you and he have talked me over!  I was sure of it.  And no doubt you told Jimmy he was right in hating me.”

“I never discussed the matter with him at all.  I couldn’t prevent his telling me what he felt about you.”