“So I apologized,” I said. “Quite right,” she said. “But not to Mr. Chrysostom,” I said. “I apologized to the moisture.” “To the moisture?” she said. “What moisture?” “Why, to the moisture,” I explained, “of the tear.” She stared at me with her mouth open. “But what was the good of that?” she asked. “The moisture couldn’t hear you.” “No. It couldn’t hear me,” I said, “it couldn’t hear me, Miss Botterill. But don’t you see that by apologizing to the moisture, I was conveying to Mr. Chrysostom, in the most trenchant way possible, my own opinion of his character.” “No, I don’t,” said Miss Botterill. “I don’t see it at all.” “Then I’ll explain it,” I said, “over again.” Just at that moment, however, a customer entered the show-room, and although I waited for several minutes, another customer entered the show-room just as the first was departing. I therefore decided to leave the premises, spurning them, as I did so, with my right foot, and it was not until I had already turned into Ludgate Hill that I suddenly remembered my unused weapon. Mrs. Chrysostom Lorton—I had utterly forgotten her. Indeed I had never seen her since my first interview. But she had always been there, of course—there in the background—ready to be used in an emergency like this. I stopped short. Yes, I had forgotten her. But to have remembered her was to act at once. For there could be no doubt about it. It would be wholly impossible for her to afford to sit still and have me dismissed. I therefore advanced to the kerb-stone and hailed an omnibus, and within half an hour of conceiving the idea was in a third-class carriage leaving Liverpool Street Station upon my second visit to Enfield. Depressed as I was, too, both physically and mentally, in spite of my crushing rejoinder to Mr. Chrysostom, my spirits perceptibly rose as I neared my destination, stimulated by the memory of my previous triumph. For though a good many years had now elapsed since I last stood in that lascivious boudoir, Time had not dimmed the spiritual victory that it had been my privilege to gain there.