"I perfectly understand!" Lord Port Scatho exclaimed. "I perfectly approve. Believe me, I and Lady Port Scatho will do everything. . . . Everything! . . . Most admirable people. . . . Tietjens, my dear fellow, your behaviour . . . most handsome. . . ." Tietjens said: "Wait a minute. . . . There was an occasion in August, '14. In a place on the border. I can't remember the name. . . ." Lord Port Scatho burst out: "My dear fellow . . . I beg you won't. . . . I beseech you not to . . ." Tietjens went on: "Just before then Mr. Duchemin had made an attack of an unparalleled violence on his wife. It was that that caused his final incarceration. She was not only temporarily disfigured, but she suffered serious internal injuries and, of course, great mental disturbance. It was absolutely necessary that she should have change of scene. . . . But I think you will bear me out that, in that case too, their behaviour was . . . again, circumspect and right. . . ." Port Scatho said: "I know; I know . . . Lady Port Scatho and I agreed--even without knowing what you have just told me--that the poor things almost exaggerated it. . . . He slept, of course, at Jedburgh? . . ." Tietjens said: "Yes! They almost exaggerated it. . . . I had to be called in to take Mrs. Duchemin home. . . . It caused, apparently, misunderstandings. . . ." Port Scatho--full of enthusiasm at the thought that at least two unhappy victims of the hateful divorce laws had, with decency and circumspectness, found the haven of their desires--burst out: "By God, Tietjens, if I ever hear a man say a word against you. . . . Your splendid championship of your friend. . . . Your . . . your unswerving devotion . . ." Tietjens said: "Wait a minute, Port Scatho, will you?" He was unbottoning the flap of his breast pocket. "A man who can act so splendidly in one instance," Port Scatho said. . . . "And your going to France. . . . If any one . . . if _any_ one . . . dares . . ." At the sight of a vellum-cornered, green-edged book in Tietjens' hand Sylvia suddenly stood up; as Tietjens took from an inner flap a cheque that had lost its freshness she made three great strides over the carpet to him. "Oh, Chrissie! . . ." she cried out. "He hasn't . . . That beast hasn't . . ." Tietjens answered: "He has . . ." He handed the soiled cheque to the banker. Port Scatho looked at it with slow bewilderment. "'Account overdrawn,'" he read. "Brownie's . . . my nephew's handwriting. . . . To the club . . . It's . . ." "You aren't going to take it lying down?" Sylvia said. "Oh, thank goodness, you aren't going to take it lying down." "No! I'm not going to take it lying down," Tietjens said. "Why should I?" A look of hard suspicion came over the banker's face. "You appear," he said, "to have been overdrawing your account. People should not overdraw their accounts. For what sum are you overdrawn?" Tietjens handed his pass-book to Port Scatho.