"No, I don't forget you, I don't forget you!" ("If only he would!" groaned Arthur.) "Well, I must consider my course. Where did you say the telegram was sent from?" "Winchester." "I expect they stopped to breakfast there." "Very likely." Arthur rose to his feet; he did not enjoy a "reconstruction" of the flight. The afflicted husband made no protest against his movement. "Yes, leave me alone for a little while. I have to think--I must review the position. Tell Judith I should like to see her in about an hour's time, and--and go into matters." Happy to escape, Arthur left him facing the situation, reviewing the position, considering his course, and determining to get up--to get, at any rate, into his arm-chair--the better to perform these important operations. The messenger of catastrophe came away with a strange impression of the effect of his tidings. After the first outburst--itself rather peevish than passionate--came that idle, almost morbid curiosity about details from which he himself instinctively averted his eyes; then this ineffectual fussiness, this vain self-assertion, which turned to facing the situation only when there was no longer anything or anybody to face, and to reviewing the position only when it was past mending. Of smitten love, even of pride wounded to the heart, there seemed little sign. All Arthur's feelings fought against the sacrilegious idea, but it would not be denied an entry into his mind--after the querulous anger, after the curiosity, mingling with the futile fussiness, there had been an undercurrent of relief--relief that nothing and nobody had to be faced really, that really nothing could be done, nothing expected from him, no call made now on courage or on energy--no, nor on a love or a sympathy already dead before Oliver Wyse struck them the final blow. That morning's flight, then, was not the tragedy, but the end of it, not the culminating scene of terror and pity, but the fall of the curtain on a play played-out. Whatever of good or evil in life it might bring for Bernadette, for Godfrey it brought relief in its train. It was grievous, no doubt, in its external incidents--a society scandal, a family shame--but in itself, in its true significance to his mind, as it really and closely touched his heart, it came as an end--an end to the strain which he could not support, to the challenge which he dared not face, on which he had turned his back in sulks and malingering--an end to his long fruitless effort to be a satisfactory husband. When Judith came down from her interview and joined Arthur in the garden before lunch, she had another aspect of the case to exhibit, a sidelight to throw on the deserted man's mind and its workings. "How did you find him?" Arthur asked her.