My publisher insists on so many pages of copy. When he does not get what he wants, the language rich and powerful enough to serve his needs has yet to be invented. But he struggles on with the help of a dictionary of American expletives. However, we are coming to the conclusion, and that, I think, will waken the public up! And yet this chapter will be a short one. It will be the review of a struggle against a temptation to commit, not perhaps crime, but an act of the grossest bad taste. To that temptation I succumbed; we both succumbed. It is a temptation to which I dare think poor human nature has rarely been subjected. The temptation to go and see a man, a fellow-creature, tried for a crime which one’s wife committed, and to which one is an accessory after the fact. Oh, that morning! How well I remember it. Breakfast was just oyer, the table with its relics of fragrant bloaters and _terrine_ of _paté_ still stood in the _patio_. I was alone. I loafed lazily and at my ease. Then I lighted a princely _havanna_, blaming myself for profaning the scented air from _el Cuadro de Leicester_. You see I have such a sensitive aesthetic conscience. Then I took from my pocket the _Sporting Times_, and set listlessly to work to skim its lengthy columns. This was owing to my vow to Philippa, that I would read every journal published in England. As the day went on, I often sat with them up to my shoulders, and littering all the _patio_. I ran down the topics of the day. This scene is an ‘under-study,’ by the way, of the other scene in which I read of the discovery of Sir Runan’s hat. At last I turned my attention to the provincial news column. A name, a familiar name, caught my eye; the name of one who, I had fondly fancied, had: long-lain unburied in my cellar at the ‘pike. My princely _havanna_ fell unheeded on the marble pavement of the _patio_, as with indescribable amazement I read the following ‘par.’ ‘William Evans, the man accused of the murder of Sir Runan Errand, will be tried at the Newnham Assizes on the 20th. The case, which excites considerable interest among the _élite_ of Boding and district, will come on the _tapis_ the first day of the meeting. The evidence will be of a purely circumstantial kind.’ Every word of that ‘par’ was a staggerer. I sat as one stunned, dazed, stupid, motionless, with my eye on the sheet. Was ever man in such a situation before? Your wife commits a murder. You become an accessory after the fact. You take steps to destroy one of the two people who suspect the truth. And then you find that the man on whom you committed murder is accused of the murder which you and your wife committed. The sound of my mother’s voice scolding Philippa wakened me from my stupor. They were coming. I could not face them. Doubling up the newspaper, I thrust it into my pocket, and sped swiftly out of the _patio_.