“Yes; by God, it’s true what you say! I told Ellida long ago that my business in life was to wait for Katya and to see that you had a good time.” He paused, and then added quickly: “I’ve lived to see you in hell, and I’ve waited for Katya till”--he moved one of his hands in a gesture of despair--“till all the fire’s burned out,” he added suddenly. “So that now,” she retorted with a little bitter humour, “what you’ve got to do is to give Katya a good time and go on waiting for me.” “Till when?” he said with a sudden hot eagerness. “Oh,” she said, “till all the ships that ever sailed come home; till all the wild-oats that were ever sown are reaped; till the sun sets in the east and the ice on the poles is all melted away. If you were the only man in all the world, my dear, I would never look at you again.” Grimshaw looked at the ground and muttered aimlessly: “What’s to be done? What’s to be done?” He went on repeating this like a man stupified beyond the power of speech and thought, until at last it was as if a minute change of light passed across the figure of Pauline Leicester--as if the softness faded out of her face, her colour and her voice, as if, having for that short interval revealed the depths of her being, she had closed in again, finally and irrevocably. So that it was with a sort of ironic and business-like crispness that she said: “All that’s to be done is the one thing that you’ve got to do.” “And that?” Robert Grimshaw asked. “That is to find the man who rang up that number. You’ve got to do that because you know all about these things.” “I?” Robert Grimshaw said desolately. “Oh yes, I know all about these things.” “You know,” Pauline continued, “she’s very forcible, your Katya. You should have seen how she spoke to Sir William Wells, until at last he positively roared with fury, and yet she hadn’t said a single word except, in the most respectful manner in the world, ‘Wouldn’t it have been best the very first to discover who the man on the telephone was?” “How did she know about the man on the telephone?” Grimshaw said. “You didn’t. Sir William told me not to tell you.” “Oh, Sir William!” she said, with the first contempt that he had ever heard in her voice. “He didn’t want anybody to know anything. And when Katya told him that over there they always attempt to cure a shock of that sort by a shock almost exactly similar, he simply roared out: ‘Theories! theories! theories!’ That was his motor that went just now.” They were both silent for a long time, and then suddenly Robert Grimshaw said: “It was I that rang up 4,259 Mayfair.” Pauline only answered: “Ah!”