the other side of the river and
found serious occupation in exchanging airy badinage with him; for me
with an abominable little pain inside inexorably eating my life out and
wasting me away literally and perceptibly like a shadow and twisting
me up half a dozen times a day in excruciating agony; for me, in this
delectable condition of soul and this deplorable condition of body, to
think of running hundreds of miles from home with--to say the least of
it--so inconvenient a creature as a big, bronze-haired woman, the idea
was inexpressibly and weirdly comic.

I stepped into the drawing-room close by and drew up a telegram to Dale.

"Lady summoned by Papadopoulos on private affairs. Avoid lunacy save for
electioneering purposes.--SIMON."

Then I joined Lola and Colonel Bunnion. She was lying back in her
laziest and most pantherine attitude, and she looked up at me as I
approached with eyes full of velvet softness. For the life of me I
could not help feeling glad that they were turned on me and not on Dale
Kynnersley.

Almost immediately the elder Miss Bostock came up to claim the Colonel
for bridge. He rose reluctantly.

"I suppose it's no use asking you to make a fourth, Mr. de Gex?" she
asked, after the subacid manner of her kind.

"I'm afraid not," I replied sweetly. Whereupon she rescued the Colonel
from the syren and left me alone with her. I lit a cigarette and sat by
her side. As she did not stir or speak I asked whether she was tired.

"Not very. I'm thinking. Do you know you've taught me an awful lot?"

"I? What can I have taught you?"

"The way people like yourself look at things. I'm treating Dale
abominably. I didn't realise it before."

Now why on earth did she bring Dale in just at that moment.

"Indeed?" said I.

She nodded her head and said in her languorous voice:

"He's over head and ears in love with me and thinks I care for him. I
don't. I don't care a brass button for him. I'm a bad influence in his
life, and the sooner I take myself out of it the better. Don't you think
so?"

"You know my opinions," I said.

"If I had followed your advice at first," she continued, "we needn't
have had all this commotion. And yet I'm not sorry."

"What do you propose to do?" I asked.

"Before deciding, I shall see my husband."

"You shall do no such thing."

She smiled. "I shall."

I protested. Captain Vauvenarde had put himself outside the pale. He was
not fit to associate with decent wom