s his long, sarcastic figure--her husband and my friend. An
impossible situation, when you come to consider it. The evenings that he
spent at home very soon became intolerable, from every point of view. I
grew so nervous with the strain of keeping a hold on myself, that even
her tenderness could no longer soothe me. He didn't seem to notice
anything amiss, and, you know, the funny, horrible, contradictory part
was that, much as I now hated him, I was still conscious of his charm.
And so, I think, was she. Can't you picture the trio in that little
Chelsea room, while the barges floated by, and she and I sat on opposite
sides of the fireplace, so terribly aware of one another, and _he_ lay
on the sofa, his long legs trailing over the end, discoursing in his
admirable and varied way on life, politics, and letters? I wonder in
how many London drawing-rooms that situation was being simultaneously
reproduced?

"Why do I bore you with a recital so commonplace?" he exclaimed,
bringing his fist down on the table; "are you beginning to ask yourself
that? What have you to do with journalistic adulteries? Only wait: you
shan't complain that the sequel is commonplace, and perhaps, one day,
when you read in the papers the sequel to the sequel, you will remember
and be entertained. He caught us red-handed, you see. It was one evening
when we hadn't expected him home until after midnight, and at ten
o'clock the door opened and he stood suddenly in the room. Squalid
enough, isn't it? To this day I don't know whether he had laid a trap
for us, or whether he was as surprised as we were. He stood there
stock still, and I sprang up and stood too, and we glared across at
one another. After a moment he said, 'Paolo and Francesca? this scene
acquires quite a classic dignity, doesn't it, from frequent repetition?'
And then he said the most astonishing thing; he said, 'Don't let me
disturb you, and above all remember that _I don't mind_,' and with that
he went out of the room and shut the door.

"After that," said the man with the white hair, "I didn't go near the
house for a week. This was at her request, and of course I couldn't
refuse her. During that week she telephoned to me daily, once in the
morning and once in the evening, always with the same story: she had
seen nothing of him. He had not even been home to collect any of his
clothes. You may imagine the state of anxiety I lived in during that
week, which his disappearance did nothing t