"I didn't know I was coming," she said. "It came into my head to come suddenly. Ten minutes before I started. And I came. I didn't know papers were wanted. I suppose I could have got them if I had wanted them. . . . You never asked me if I had any papers. You just froze on to me and had me into your special carriage. ... I didn't know you were coming." That seemed to Perowne the last insult. He exclaimed: "Oh, damn it, Sylvia! you _must_ have known. . . . You were at the Quirks' squash on Wednesday evening. And _they_ knew. My best friends." "Since you ask for it," she said, "I didn't know. . . . And I would not have come by that train if I had known you would be going by it. You force me to say rude things to you." She added: "Why can't you be more conciliatory?" to keep him quiet for a little. His jaw dropped down. She was wondering where Christopher had got the money to pay for a bed at the hotel. Only a very short time before she had drawn all the balance of his banking account, except for a shilling. It was the middle of the month and he could not have drawn any more pay. . . . That, of course, was a try on her part. He might be forced into remonstrating. In the same way she had tried on the accusation that he had carried off her sheets. It was sheer wilfulness, and when she looked again at his motionless features she knew that she had been rather stupid. . . . But she was at the end of her tether: she had before now tried making accusations against her husband, but she had never tried inconveniencing him. . . . Now she suddenly realized the full stupidity of which she had been guilty. He would know perfectly well that those petty frightfulnesses of hers were not in the least in her note; so he would know, too, that each of them was just a try on. He would say: "She is trying to make me squeal. I'm damned if I will!" She would have to adopt much more formidable methods. She said: "He shall . . . he shall . . . he _shall_ come to heel." Major Perowne had now closed his jaw. He was reflecting. Once he mumbled: "More _conciliatory_! Holy smoke!"