She took them off. He set the shoes in the fender. He hung the coat over the back of the chair to dry. As she stood upright the damp streamed from her skirts and drifted toward the fire. "How about that skirt?" "I could slip it off, and me stockings, too, if you didn't mind." "All right," he muttered, and turned from her. He could hear the delicate silken swish of her draperies as they slid from her to the floor. She was slenderer than ever in the short satin petticoat that was her inner sheath. Her naked feet, spread to the floor, showed white but unshapely. She stood there like some beautiful flower rising superbly from two ugly, livid, and distorted roots. But neither her beauty nor her ugliness could touch him now. "Look here," he said, "I'll get you some dry things." His mind was dulled by the shock of seeing her, so that it was unable to attach any real importance or significance to her return. He knew her to be both callous and capricious; therefore, he told himself that there was no need to take her seriously now. The thing was to get rid of her as soon as possible. He smothered the instinct that had warned him of his danger, and persuaded himself that dry things would meet the triviality of her case. He went upstairs very softly to his room. In a jar on the chimney-piece he found a small key. Still going softly, he let himself into the little unfurnished room over the porch where boxes were stored. Among them was the trunk which contained Violet's long-abandoned clothes. He unlocked it, rummaged, deliberated, selected finally a serge skirt, draggled but warm; a pair of woolen stockings, and shoes, stout for all their shabbiness. And as he knelt over the trunk his mind cleared suddenly, and he knew what he was going to do. He was going to fetch a cab, if he could get one, and take her away in it. If she was staying in London he would take her straight back to whatever place she had come from. If she came from a distance he would see her started on her journey home. He was prepared, if necessary, to hang about for hours in any station, waiting for any train that would remove her. If the worst came to the worst he would take a room for her in some hotel and leave her there. But he would not have her sitting with him till past midnight in his house. It was too risky. He knew what he was about. He knew that there was danger in any course that could give rise to the suspicion of cohabitation. He knew, not only that cohabitation in itself was fatal, but that the injured husband who invoked the law must refrain from the very appearance of that evil. Of course, he knew what Violet had come for. She was beginning to get uneasy about her divorce. And, personally, he couldn't see where the risk came in unless the suit was defended. And it wasn't going to be defended. It couldn't be. The suspicion of collusion would in his case be a far more dangerous thing. It was what he had been specially warned against.