It wasn’t very like a Pinsent to give way to this illicit expansion of fact, but Rose comforted herself by thinking that after all, editors said “we” when there was only one of them writing, and most of the married people she knew expressed themselves in the plural, though that perhaps was because they really did the things together. Still, she went on writing “we” because she didn’t want her people to think anything funny about Léon. She had just got as far as “We have such jolly little dinners in the garden,” when she heard Léon’s whistle coming up the stairs. He stood looking at her a little curiously. “You are writing,” he asked her, “to your people?” “To Agatha,” she said. “Have you any message?” Léon sometimes sent very amusing messages to Agatha. For a moment Léon did not reply, then he said, “And what do you say to them--of me--your people?” Rose blushed, just the same wonderful pink tulip blush Léon had from the first particularly admired, but it was ill-timed, it looked guilty. It shot through his uneasy mind that she had been complaining of him to the Pinsents. In his irritable, resentful state it gave him a sudden sense of justification. Hadn’t he done already wonders for Rose? He had not made open love to Elise (until just now, of course), he had borne for over a month the ennui of Capri. He hadn’t so much as been to a café without his wife, and now he had almost decided not to leave her! “Tell them,” he said bitterly, “that you are perfect, and that I am a monster of depravity. Almost all wives say that to their relatives sooner or later. You, it appears, have taken up the tone in good time!” “Léon!” she cried, aghast. And then, because she loved him so, because she had shielded him in the defiance of truth, because she had never had a suspicion of his faithlessness, she chose this moment to say the only harsh thing she had ever said to him. “I think,” she said, turning away her eyes, “that you are guilty of very bad taste.” It was, of course, the one fatal reproach to make to a Frenchman. If she had said he was guilty of anything else he would have forgiven her. Léon rushed into their room, his cheeks on fire as if she had struck him. It was clear she no longer loved him! Coldly, cruelly, with her horrible English justice, so out of place in a woman, she had thrown this stone at his heart! There could be but one issue now. He must go to Naples. She complained of him to her parents and she had accused him of bad taste! He packed a small bag feverishly. The door between them was shut. Rose hesitated. Should she open it and tell him she was sorry?