Such was the case, however, for when brooding alone, upon the very next evening, in Greenwich Park, a familiar voice pierced my consciousness and suddenly awakened my every faculty. It was a warm but cloudy April dusk, and I was sitting upon a seat under a large chestnut tree, when I began to hear again, to my disgust and astonishment, the detested voice of Mr. Septimus Lorton. Rapidly withdrawing myself behind the tree, I then observed him to be approaching my seat, evidently engrossed in his conversation with a medium-sized female who was accompanying him. For a moment, as was only natural, I resolved to transport myself as far as possible from his neighbourhood. But by some impulse—I realize now, of course, that this could only have had one origin—I merely performed perhaps a quarter of a revolution round the commanding trunk of the chestnut tree. By this manœuvre, not, I think, uningenious, I thus concealed myself from his vision while at the same time conferring upon myself such possible advantages as might accrue from observation. Nor was the event to prove me unjustified. For hardly had he arrived at the seat that I had vacated when he proceeded, accompanied by his companion, himself to sit down upon it. Being a slow runner my position now was one of the extremest peril, and in the event of detection, I could only have relied upon my happily exceptional vocal powers. But a closer inspection of Mr. Lorton’s companion and something in the tones in which he was addressing her combined in bidding me hold my ground entirely regardless of personal danger. Indeed from the beginning, I think, it was less the physical than the moral contingencies that disturbed me. For I had instantly recognized, to my profound discomfort, that the person accompanying him _was not Mrs. Septimus Lorton_. A woman of much slenderer and more graceful build, she had a pink complexion and hazel eyes, with a rather large but conceivably alluring mouth, and a considerable quantity of yellowish hair. Her name, it appeared, was Nina, the i being pronounced as if it were an e, and it was quickly apparent to me that, for the first time, I was in the presence of the gravest human vice. Nor have I ever, perhaps, entirely recovered from the enormous shock of that discovery. For though I had been aware, of course, from my studies of Holy Scripture, that such things had occurred in the Middle East, and had even deduced from contemporary newspapers their occasional survival in the British Islands, I had never dreamed it possible that here, in a public park in the Xtian London of my own experience, a married man could thus openly sit with his arm round a female who was not his wife.