ith us," said she.

"My wife isn't."

"But your wife isn't the vast majority of women," Audrey protested.

"Oh yes, she is," said the detective, "so far as I'm concerned. Every wife
is, so far as her husband is concerned. Sure, you ought to know that!" In
his Irish way he doubled the "r" of the word "sure," and somehow this trick
made Audrey like him still more. "My wife believes," he concluded, "that
woman's sphere is the home."

("His wife is stout," Audrey decided within herself, on no grounds
whatever. "If she wasn't, she couldn't be a vast majority.")

Aloud she said:

"Well, then, why can't you leave them alone in their sphere, instead of
worrying them and spying on them down areas?"

"D'ye mean at Paget Gardens?"

"Of course."

"Oh!" he laughed. "That wasn't professional--if you'll excuse me being so
frank. That was just due to human admiration. It's not illegal to admire a
young woman, I suppose, even if she is a suffragette."

"What young woman are you talking about?"

"Miss Susan Foley, of course. I won't tell you what I think of her, in
spite of all she did, because I've learnt that it's a mistake to praise one
woman to another. But I don't mind admitting that her going off to the
north has made me life a blank. If I'd thought she'd go, I should never
have reported the affair at the Yard. But I was annoyed, and I'm rather
hasty." He paused, and ended reflectively: "I committed follies to get a
word with the young lady, and I didn't get it, but I'd do the same again."

"And you a married man!" Audrey burst out, startled, and diverted, at the
explanation, but at the same time outraged by a confession so cynical.

The detective pulled a silky moustache.

"When a wife is very strongly convinced that her sphere is the home," he
retorted slowly and seriously, "you're tempted at times to let her have the
sphere all to herself. That's the universal experience of married men, and
ye may believe me, miss--madam."

Audrey said:

"And now Miss Foley's gone north, you've decided to come and admire _me_ in
_my_ home!"

"So it is your home!" murmured the detective with an uncontrolled quickness
which wakened Audrey's old suspicions afresh--and which created a new
suspicion, the suspicion that the fellow was simply playing with her. "I
assure you I came here to recover; I'd heard it was the finest climate in
England."

"Recover?"

"Yes, from fire-extinguishers. D'ye know I coughed for twenty-four hour