Almost everybody else saw him as the victim of an unscrupulous woman. That was the view held by Mrs. Leeds, who knew nothing whatever about it; by Leeds, who may well have been biased owing to his non-success with Mrs. Harter at the picnic; and by the Kendals. Lady Annabel was more impartial, and spoke severely and regretfully about them both. But even she said, “Such a pity--a nice young fellow like that.” Whereas when she referred to Mrs. Harter, she simply said, “Disgraceful--a woman of her age!” Claire’s attitude was rather a curious one. She liked Bill Patch and she had always been prejudiced against Mrs. Harter, but she was one of the few people who said hardly anything, after all, about what was going on, and she snubbed Sallie even more severely than usual when Sallie dissected the situation in her habitual cold-blooded, clear-sighted way. Martyn Ambrey, who took the line of having discovered from the very first that the personality of Mrs. Harter was one that presaged disaster, was, if possible, more intensely interested than his sister. He exploited the whole thing, conversationally, letting off verbal fireworks in display of his own powers of analysis, and evidently hoping for nothing so much as a grand dramatic climax, such as the murder of Harter by Captain Patch or the suicide of Mrs. Harter. “Which, of everything in the world, are about the most unlikely things to happen,” said Sallie scornfully. “Life is nothing but a series of anticlimaxes, one after another.” “Anticlimax implies climax,” said Martyn, scoring. Their clever flippancies were rather revealing. They would have seen Tragedy itself in terms of _revue_--clever, noisy, flippant, essentially unemotional, everything that, in 1924, was meant by “modern.” “Harter will have to come to the show to-morrow night,” Martyn affirmed. “It’ll be frightfully interesting to see them all three together.” “I should imagine that he will take his wife away to-morrow morning, if he has any sense of decency,” Claire replied coldly. Martyn returned gravely that Harter, he was perfectly certain, had no sense of decency whatever. “Besides,” said I, “the word ‘take’ is not one that I should apply to Mrs. Harter, least of all, perhaps, where her husband is concerned.” “In any case, she’s bound to sing for us,” Christopher pointed out. He was taking the play with intense seriousness, whereas the triangle of Bill, and Mrs. Harter, and Mrs. Harter’s husband scarcely interested him at all. He saw it--when he did see it, that is to say--merely as something rather commonplace and faintly shocking.