ally, there
would be nothing else for him to do but to walk out, and he would look
an awful ass doing it. He saw himself standing in the room and looking
at them, and saying, "I've no intention of interrupting you." Perhaps
Desmond would answer, "You're not interrupting us. We've finished all
we had to say." And _he_ would walk out and leave them there.
Not caring.

He wondered if _he_ would look an awful ass doing it.

In the end, when it came, he hadn't to do any of these things. It
happened very quietly and simply, early on a Sunday evening after he had
got back from Eltham. He had dined with Drayton and his people on
Saturday, and stayed, for once, over-night, risking it.

Desmond was sitting on a cushion, on the floor, with her thin legs in
their grey stockings slanting out in front of her. She propped her chin
on her hands. Her thin, long face, between the great black ear-bosses,
looked at him thoughtfully, without rancour.

"Nicky," she said, "Alfred Orde-Jones slept with me last night."

And he said, simply and quietly, "Very well, Desmond; then I shall leave
you. You can keep the flat, and I or my father will make you an
allowance. I shan't divorce you, but I won't live with you."

"Why won't you divorce me?" she said.

"Because I don't want to drag you through the dirt."

She laughed quietly. "Dear Nicky," she said, "how sweet and like you.
But don't let's have any more chivalrous idiocy. I don't want it. I
never did." (She had forgotten that she had wanted it very badly once.
But Nicky did not remind her of that time. No matter. She didn't want it
now). "Let's look at the thing sensibly, without any rotten sentiment.
We've had some good times together, and we've had some bad times. I'll
admit that when you married me you saved me from a very bad time.
That's no reason why we should go on giving each other worse times
indefinitely. You seem to think I don't want you to divorce me. What
else do you imagine Alfred came for last night? Why we've been trying
for it for the last three months.

"Of course, if you'll let _me_ divorce _you_ for desertion, it would be
very nice of you. That," said Desmond, "is what decent people do."

He went out and telephoned to his father. Then he left her and went back
to his father's house.

Desmond asked the servant to remember particularly that it was the
fifteenth of June and that the master was going away and would not come
back again.

* * *