"What he caught on to was what I told him about appearing at the Divorce Registry within eight days and about instructing a solicitor afterwards. He said he'd go to the Registry at once--at once, at once, at once! and he said, very impolitely, poor chap, that he'd instruct no infernal solicitors; he'd do the whole thing himself. He had the feeling, I could see, that he must be spurning this horrible thing, and spurning it at once, and spurning it himself. He was like a chap with his clothes on fire, crazy only to rush into water and get rid of it. The stigma of the thing was so intolerable to him that his feeling was that he couldn't sit by and let other people defend him and do the business for him; he must do it himself, hurl it back with his own hands, shout it back with his own throat. He'll calm down and get more reasonable in time, no doubt, and then I'll have another go at him about running the case for him; but anyway, there was the one thing he could do pretty well there and then, and that was enter his defence at the registry. So I took charge of him to help him ease his mind that much. "I took charge of him. He wasn't capable of thinking of anything for himself. I packed his bag and paid his bill and took him round to our hotel and it wasn't far off then to the train my wife and I had fixed to get back on. I told my wife what had happened and she played the brick. You see, the chap was like as if he was dazed. Like as if he was walking in a trance. Just did what he was told and said nothing. So we played it up on that, my missus and I; we just sort of took him along without consulting him or seeming to take any notice of him. It was too late to do anything that night when we got up to town. He made a bit of a fuss, lost his temper and swore I was trying to hinder him; but my wife managed him a treat; by Jove, she was marvellous with him, and we got him round to our flat and put him up for the night. I pushed him off to bed early, but I heard him walking up and down his room hours after and talking to himself--talking in tones of horror--'Me! Me! Adulterer!' "It was rather dreadful, hearing the poor chap. You see, what was the matter with him was, being the frightfully clean, intensely refined sort of chap he is, appalling horror at being thought, by his wife who knew him so well, capable of what was so repulsive to his mind. He loathed the very sound of the word that was used against him. Obscene, he kept on calling it. He was like a man fallen in a mire and plucking at the filthy stuff all over him and reeking of it and not able to eat or sleep or think or do anything but go mad with it. That was how it got him. Like that.