"No! I certainly haven't. Can you get that into your head? I certainly haven't." She made a further effort over immense fatigue. "I assure you--I beg you to believe if it will give you any ease--that Mr. Tietjens has never addressed a word of love to me in his life. Nor have I to him. We have hardly talked to each other in all the time we have known each other." Mrs. Duchemin said in a harsh voice: "Seven people in the last five weeks have told me you have had a child by that brute beast: he's ruined because he has to keep you and your mother and the child. You won't deny that he has a child somewhere hidden away? . . ." Valentine exclaimed suddenly: "Oh, Ethel, you mustn't . . . you _mustn't_ be jealous of me! If you only knew you wouldn't be jealous of me. . . . I suppose the child you were going to have was by Christopher? Men are like that. . . . But not of me! You need never, never. I've been the best friend you can ever have had. . . ." Mrs. Duchemin exclaimed harshly, as if she were being strangled: "A sort of blackmail! I knew it would come to that! It always does with your sort. Then do your damnedest, you harlot. You never set foot in this house again! Go you and rot. . . ." Her face suddenly expressed extreme fear and with great swiftness she ran up the room. Immediately afterwards she was tenderly bending over a great bowl of roses beneath the lustre. The voice of Vincent Macmaster from the door had said: "Come in, old man. Of course I've got ten minutes. The book's in here somewhere. . . ." Macmaster was beside her, rubbing his hands, bending with his curious, rather abject manner, and surveying her agonisedly with his eyeglass, which enormously magnified his lashes, his red lower lid and the veins on his cornea. "Valentine!" he said, "my dear Valentine. . . . You've heard? We've decided to make it public. . . . Guggums will have invited you to our little feast. And there will be a surprise, I believe. . . ." Edith Ethel looked, as she bent, lamentably and sharply, over her shoulder at Valentine. "Yes," she said bravely, aiming her voice at Edith Ethel, "Ethel has invited me. I'll try to come. . . ." "Oh, but you must," Macmaster said, "just you and Christopher, who've been so kind to us. For old time's sake. You could not . . ." Christopher Tietjens was ballooning slowly from the door, his hand tentatively held out to her. As they practically never shook hands at home it was easy to avoid his hand. She said to herself: "Oh! How is it possible! How could he have. . ." And the terrible situation poured itself over her mind: the miserable little husband, the desperately nonchalant lover--and Edith Ethel mad with jealousy! A doomed household. She hoped Edith Ethel had seen her refuse her hand to Christopher.