Frank still had me on the hip. "Then that was equally absurd of you! Fay wasn't the only absurd one apparently. You see all the time that you were inventing trouble by thinking that you were too old and dull for her, she was inventing trouble by thinking that she was too young and silly for you, and that you were comparing her with your sister, and finding her inferior. And you know how mad a woman gets when she thinks her husband likes anybody else more than he likes her. There's nothing she wouldn't do to punish him and hurt herself at the same time! And that is how Fay got. She was so wild at finding you thought more of Miss Kingsnorth than you did of her, that she didn't care what happened. She thought you despised her, and that simply finished her off altogether. And when she was unhappy she tried to drown her unhappiness in theatricals and fallals of that kind, which didn't really do her the slightest good: but when husbands fail, women set up all sorts of ridiculous scarecrows in their place. It's the way they're made, I suppose. And when the theatricals turned out to be no good in helping her to forget, she took to travelling, and that was how we came to be in Belgium when the war broke out. But travelling didn't really help her either, though she had an idea that the old cities of Flanders might be rather soothing. But as things panned out they were quite the reverse, and we'd far better have remained in Australia!" "It is all incredible to me," I said. But Frank had no mercy. "The long and the short of it is you were so busy worrying yourself about the relations between Fay and your sister, that you let the relations between Fay and yourself slide. And that was really the only thing that mattered. Then Fay got it into her head that you regretted having married her when you compared her with Miss Kingsnorth and saw how young and silly she was in comparison: and so she decided to leave you and your sister once more alone together, as she believed that that was what really could make you happy. And even now I can't help admitting that Miss Kingsnorth is far more your sort than Fay was." I was silent for a time. The solid earth seemed slipping away beneath my feet. Then I said: "Do you mean to tell me, on your word of honour, that to the best of your belief neither you nor Annabel tried to come between my wife and me?"