Dick had no wish to hear what dogma it was that had tempted her, but it amused him as he returned home to think of all the strange things that Mrs. Forest had told him; one thing especially amused him, that her real interest in Catholicism was the confessional. 'How one does get back to oneself in all these things,' he muttered as he panted up the hot steep road. 'A convent for the reformation of female drunkards,' he repeated. 'It's very strange: she can't know anything about my wife. A strange woman,' he continued, and fell to thinking if all that she had told him was the truth, or if it was one of those stories that people imagine about themselves, and imagine so vividly that after a few years they begin to believe that everything they have told has befallen them. He pulled the books from his pocket; they were evidently written in a strange language, but there were people who could learn languages and could do nothing else. Her Bulgarian poetry could not be better than her English, and he knew what that was like. 'I suppose as soon as she hears I'm married, and she's sure to find out sooner or later, she will be off on some other back. But is this altogether sure?' He had not walked many steps before he remembered that the lecture she was giving at the Working Men's Club was on the chastity of the marriage state; moreover, she had admitted to him that the Bulgarian adventure was a spiritual one. 'I should say she was a woman with a big temperament which must have been worth gratifying when she went away with that Bulgarian; I wouldn't have minded being in his skin. She hasn't forgotten that she was once a beautiful girl, that's the worst of it, she hasn't forgotten,' and Dick remembered that at parting she was a little demonstrative, saying to him on the staircase: 'But we aren't parting for long. You will be here tomorrow at my door at the same hour.' XXVI The appointment was for five o'clock, and Kate would have liked to remain on the pier with Dick enjoying the summer evening, but he seemed so intent on returning to their lodging that she did not like to oppose his wishes, and she allowed herself to be led all the way up the dusty town to their close, hot rooms that she might try over Fredegonde's music. That he should wish to hear her voice again in this music flattered her, but she rose from the piano, her face aflame, when he began to mention an appointment. 'It's too bad of you, Dick, to bring me home and then remember an appointment.' Dick overflowed with mellifluous excuses which did not seem to allay Kate's anger, and as he hurried down the street it occurred to him that he might have thought of a better reason than Fredegonde for bringing her home. However this might be, his thoughts were now with Montgomery and Mrs. Forest rather than with Kate, and it was not till he drew the latchkey from his pocket that Kate's singing of the waltz returned to him: he ascended the stairs singing it.