"Do! What do I propose to do! Well, er, to be absolutely frank, at the
moment I don't quite know."

"You never will know, Reggie. You're one of the idle rich, and your
brain, if you ever had one, has atrophied."

Well, that seemed to me to put the lid on it. I didn't mind a
heart-to-heart talk, but this was mere abuse. I changed the subject.

"What would you like after that fish?" I said coldly.

You know how it is when you get an idea. For awhile it sort of simmers
inside you, and then suddenly it sizzles up like a rocket, and there
you are, right up against it. That's what happened now. I went away
from that luncheon, vaguely determined to pull off some stunt which
would prove that I was right there with the gray matter, but without
any clear notion of what I was going to do. Side by side with this in
my mind was the case of dear old Harold. When I wasn't brooding on the
stunt, I was brooding on Harold. I was fond of the good old lad, and I
hated the idea of his slowly wrecking the home purely by being a chump.
And all of a sudden the two things clicked together like a couple of
chemicals, and there I was with a corking plan for killing two birds
with one stone--putting one across that would startle and impress Ann,
and at the same time healing the breach between Harold and Hilda.

My idea was that, in a case like this, it's no good trying opposition.
What you want is to work it so that the chappie quits of his own
accord. You want to egg him on to overdoing the thing till he gets so
that he says to himself, "Enough! Never again!" That was what was going
to happen to Harold.