vitally deficient. He found her persistent coolness, her more or
less evident contempt for himself, exasperating in the highest
degree. He put it to himself that she was enough to provoke a
saint, and tried to think that was piquant and enjoyable, but the
blisters on his vanity asserted themselves. The fact is, he was,
under this standing irritation, getting down to the natural man
in himself for once, and the natural man in himself, in spite of
Oxford and the junior Reviewers' Club, was a Palaeolithic
creature of simple tastes and violent methods. "I'll be level
with you yet," ran like a plough through the soil of his
thoughts.

Then there was this infernal detective. Bechamel had told his
wife he was going to Davos to see Carter. To that he had fancied
she was reconciled, but how she would take this exploit was
entirely problematical. She was a woman of peculiar moral views,
and she measured marital infidelity largely by its proximity to
herself. Out of her sight, and more particularly out of the sight
of the other women of her set, vice of the recognised description
was, perhaps, permissible to those contemptible weaklings, men,
but this was Evil on the High Roads. She was bound to make a
fuss, and these fusses invariably took the final form of a
tightness of money for Bechamel. Albeit, and he felt it was
heroic of him to resolve so, it was worth doing if it was to be
done. His imagination worked on a kind of matronly Valkyrie, and
the noise of pursuit and vengeance was in the air. The idyll
still had the front of the stage. That accursed detective, it
seemed, had been thrown off the scent, and that, at any rate,
gave a night's respite. But things must be brought to an issue
forthwith.