"God!" he said within himself, "if it's sexual sins God punishes, He indeed is just and inscrutable!" . . . Because he had had physical contact with this woman before he married her; in a railway carriage; coming down from the Dukeries. An extravagantly beautiful girl! Where was the physical attraction of her gone to now? Irresistible; reclining back as the shires rushed past. . . . His mind said that she had lured him on. His intellect put the idea from him. No gentleman thinks such things of his wife. No gentleman thinks. . . . By God; she must have been with child by another man. . . . He had been fighting the conviction down all the last four months. . . . He knew now that he had been fighting the conviction all the last four months whilst, anæsthetised, he had bathed in figures and wave-theories. . . . Her last words had been: her very last words: late: all in white she had gone up to her dressing-room, and he had never seen her again; her last words had been about the child . . . "Supposing," she had begun . . . He didn't remember the rest. But he remembered her eyes. And her gesture as she peeled off her long white gloves. . . . He was looking at Mrs. Wannop's ingle; he thought it a mistake in taste, really, to leave logs in an ingle during the summer. But then what are you to do with an ingle in summer? In Yorkshire cottages they shut the ingles up with painted doors. But that is stuffy, too! He said to himself: "By God! I've had a stroke!" and he got out of his chair to test his legs. . . . But he hadn't had a stroke. It must then, he thought, be that the pain of his last consideration must be too great for his mind to register, as certain great physical pains go unperceived. Nerves, like weighing machines, can't register more than a certain amount, then they go out of action. A tramp who had had his leg cut off by a train had told him that he had tried to get up, feeling nothing at all. . . . The pain comes back though . . . He said to Mrs. Wannop, who was still talking: "I beg your pardon. I really missed what you said." Mrs. Wannop said: "I was saying that that's the best thing I can do for you." He said: "I'm really very sorry: it was that that I missed. I'm a little in trouble you know." She said: "I know: I know. The mind wanders; but I wish you'd listen. I've got to go to work, so have you. I said: after tea you and Valentine will walk into Rye to fetch your luggage." Straining his intelligence, for, in his mind, he felt a sudden strong pleasure: sunlight on pyramidal red roof in the distance: themselves descending in a long diagonal, a green hill: God, yes, he wanted open air. Tietjens said: "I see. You take us both under your protection. You'll bluff it out." Mrs. Wannop said rather coolly: "I don't know about you both. It's you I'm taking under my protection (it's _your_ phrase!) As for Valentine: she's made her bed; she must lie on it. I've told you all that already. I can't go over it again."