By eight o'clock in the evening, in a little dining-room in the
Vicuna Hotel, Bognor, the crisis had come, and Jessie, flushed
and angry in the face and with her heart sinking, faced him again
for her last st,ruggle with him. He had tricked her this time,
effectually, and luck had been on his side. She was booked as
Mrs. Beaumont. Save for her refusal to enter their room, and her
eccentricity of eating with unwashed hands, she had so far kept
up the appearances of things before the waiter. But the dinner
was grim enough. Now in turn she appealed to his better nature
and made extravagant statements of her plans to fool him.

He was white and vicious by this time, and his anger quivered
through his pose of brilliant wickedness.

"I will go to the station," she said. "I will go back--"

"The last train for anywhere leaves at 7.42."

"I will appeal to the police--"

"You don't know them."

"I will tell these hotel people."

"They will turn you out of doors. You're in such a thoroughly
false position now. They don't understand unconventionality, down
here."

She stamped her foot. "If I wander about the streets all night--"