f these
matters pierced the kindly armour that lies between mortals and what
they do not like to think of. Two men and a woman wrangling, fighting,
tearing each other before the eyes of all the world. A woman and two men
stripped of charity and gentleness, of moderation and sympathy-stripped
of all that made life decent and lovable, squabbling like savages before
the eyes of all the world. Two men, and one of them her son, and
between them a woman whom both of them had loved! "Bellew v. Bellew and
Pendyce"! And this would go down to fame in company with the pitiful
stories she had read from time to time with a sort of offended interest;
in company with "Snooks v. Snooks and Stiles," "Horaday v. Horaday,"
"Bethany v. Bethany and Sweetenham." In company with all those cases
where everybody seemed so dreadful, yet where she had often and often
felt so sorry, as if these poor creatures had been fastened in the
stocks by some malignant, loutish spirit, for all that would to come and
jeer at. And horror filled her heart. It was all so mean, and gross, and
common.

The letter contained but a few words from a firm of solicitors
confirming an appointment. She looked up at Mr. Paramor. He stopped
pencilling on his blotting-paper, and said at once:

"I shall be seeing these people myself tomorrow afternoon. I shall do my
best to make them see reason."

She felt from his eyes that he knew what she was suffering, and was even
suffering with her.

"And if--if they won't?"

"Then I shall go on a different tack altogether, and they must look out
for themselves."

Mrs. Pendyce sank back in her chair; she seemed to smell again that
smell of leather and disinfectant, and hear a sound of incessant
clicking. She felt faint, and to disguise that faintness asked at
random, "What does 'without prejudice' in this letter mean?"

Mr. Paramor smiled.

"That's an expression we always use," he said. "It means that when we
give a thing away, we reserve to ourselves the right of taking it back
again."

Mrs. Pendyce, who did not understand, murmured:

"I see. But what have they given away?"

Paramor put his elbows on the desk, and lightly pressed his finger-tips
together.

"Well," he said, "properly speaking, in a matter like this, the other
side and I are cat and dog.

"We are supposed to know nothing about each other and to want to know
less, so that when we do each other a courtesy we are obliged to save
our faces by saying, 'We d