d been a humane achievement. "When
they were boys," she explained. "It gives him a funny look. I remember
when I first met him it gave me the creeps, but I don't notice it really
now. Would you believe he couldn't see an elephant with it?"

"I wondered if it were blind," said Michael.

"Blind as a leg of mutton," said Mrs. Murdoch, and still there lingered
in her accents a trace of pride. Then suddenly her demeanor changed and
there crept over her countenance what Michael was bound to believe to be
an expression of coyness.

"Don't say anything more to Alf about the Horseshoe. You see, I only
gave you the idea I was meeting him, because I didn't really know you
very well at the time. Of course really I'd gone to see my sister. No,
without a joke, I was spending the evening with a gentleman friend."

Michael looked at her in astonishment.

"My old man wouldn't half knock me about, if he had the least suspicion.
But it's someone I knew before I was married, and that makes a
difference, doesn't it?"

"Does your husband go out with lady friends he knew before he was
married?" Michael asked, and wondered if Mrs. Murdoch would see an
implied reproof.

"What?" she shrilled. "I'd like to catch him nosing after another
woman. He wouldn't see a hundred elephants before I'd done with him. I'd
show him."

"But why should you have freedom and not he?" Michael asked.

"Never mind about him. You let him try. You see what he'd get."

Michael did not think the argument could be carried on very profitably.
So he showed signs of wanting to return to his book, and Mrs. Murdoch
retired. What extraordinary standards she had, and how bitterly she was
prepared to defend a convention, for after all in such a marriage the
infidelity of the husband was nothing but a conventional offense: she
obviously had no affection for him. The point of view became very
topsyturvy in Neptune Crescent, Michael decided.

On the last evening of the fortnight during which he had regularly
visited the Orient, Michael went straight back to Camden Town without
waiting to scan the cafes and restaurants until half-past twelve as he
usually had. This abode in Neptune Crescent was empty, and as always
when that was the case the personality of the house was very vivid upon
his imagination. As he turned up the gas-jet in the hall, the cramped
interior with its fusty smell and its thread-bare staircarpet
disappearing into the upper gloom round the corner seemed