she liked to be careful of my things like that. Fussing over me, d'you see? Trying to make it seem we were living normal, ordinary lives. "'That's the sort of life we lead together, Hapgood--together; but the life I'm caught up in, the things that are happening with me, that I'm right in the middle of, that I felt I had to get away from for a bit--astounding, Hapgood, astounding, amazing....' "I'm trying to give you exactly his own words, old man. I want you to get this business just exactly as I got it. Old Sabre turned to me with that--with that 'astounding, amazing'--turned and faced me and said: "'Hapgood, I'm finding out the most extraordinary things about this life as we've made it and as we live it. Hapgood, if I kept forty women in different parts of London and made no secret of it, nothing would be said. People would know I was rather a shameless lot, my little ways would be an open secret, but nothing would be said. I should be received everywhere. But I'm thought to have brought one woman into my house and I'm banned. I'm unspeakable. Forty, flagrantly, outside, and I'm still a received member of society. People are sorry for my wife, or pretend to be, but I'm still all right, a bit of a rake, you know, but a decent enough chap. But I take pity on one poor girl because she clings to her motherhood although she's unmarried, and I'm beyond the pale. I'm unspeakable. Amazing. Do you say it's not absolutely astounding? "'Hapgood, look here. It's this. This is what I've found. You can do the shocking things, and it can be known you do the shocking things. But you mustn't be seen doing them. You can beat your wife, and it can be known among your friends that you beat your wife. But you mustn't be seen beating her. You mustn't beat her in the street or in your neighbour's garden. You can drink, and it can be known you drink; but you mustn't be seen drunk. "'Do you see, Hapgood? Do you see? The conventions are all right, moral, sound, excellent, admirable, but to save their own face there's a blind side to them, a shut-eye side. Keep that side of them and you're all right. They'll let you alone. They'll pretend they don't see you. But come out and stand in front of them and they'll devour you. They'll smash and grind and devour you, Hapgood. They're devouring me. "'That's where they've got me in their jaws, Hapgood; and where they've got Effie in their jaws is just precisely again on a blind, shut-eye side.... They're rightly based, they're absolutely just, you can't gainsay them, but to save their face, again, they're indomitably blind and deaf to the hideous cruelties in their application. They mean well. They cause the most frightful suffering, the most frightful tragedies, but they won't look at them, they won't think of them, they won't speak of them: they mean well....