I took the confounded telegram into a remote corner of the lounge, like a dog with a bone, and growled over it for a time until the humour of the situation turned the growl into a chuckle. Even had I been in sound health and strength, the idea of running off with Lola would have been absurd. But for me, in my present eumoirous disposition of mind; for me, a half-disembodied spirit who had cast all vain and disturbing human emotions into the mud of Murglebed-on-Sea; for me who had a spirit's calm disregard for the petty passions and interests of mankind and walked through the world with no other object than healing a few human woes; for me who already saw death on the other side of the river and found serious occupation in exchanging airy badinage with him; for me with an abominable little pain inside inexorably eating my life out and wasting me away literally and perceptibly like a shadow and twisting me up half a dozen times a day in excruciating agony; for me, in this delectable condition of soul and this deplorable condition of body, to think of running hundreds of miles from home with--to say the least of it--so inconvenient a creature as a big, bronze-haired woman, the idea was inexpressibly and weirdly comic. I stepped into the drawing-room close by and drew up a telegram to Dale. “Lady summoned by Papadopoulos on private affairs. Avoid lunacy save for electioneering purposes.--SIMON.” Then I joined Lola and Colonel Bunnion. She was lying back in her laziest and most pantherine attitude, and she looked up at me as I approached with eyes full of velvet softness. For the life of me I could not help feeling glad that they were turned on me and not on Dale Kynnersley. Almost immediately the elder Miss Bostock came up to claim the Colonel for bridge. He rose reluctantly. “I suppose it's no use asking you to make a fourth, Mr. de Gex?” she asked, after the subacid manner of her kind. “I'm afraid not,” I replied sweetly. Whereupon she rescued the Colonel from the syren and left me alone with her. I lit a cigarette and sat by her side. As she did not stir or speak I asked whether she was tired. “Not very. I'm thinking. Do you know you've taught me an awful lot?” “I? What can I have taught you?” “The way people like yourself look at things. I'm treating Dale abominably. I didn't realise it before.” Now why on earth did she bring Dale in just at that moment. “Indeed?” said I. She nodded her head and said in her languorous voice: “He's over head and ears in love with me and thinks I care for him. I don't. I don't care a brass button for him. I'm a bad influence in his life, and the sooner I take myself out of it the better. Don't you think so?” “You know my opinions,” I said. “If I had followed your advice at first,” she continued, “we needn't have had all this commotion. And yet I'm not sorry.” “What do you propose to do?” I asked. “Before deciding, I shall see my husband.” “You shall do no such thing.” She smiled. “I shall.”