"It won't be half a blind, I'm telling you," she said, reading his eyes. "I've done my best for weeks and weeks to please you. I've hardly touched a drop--and this is all the thanks I get. I'm flesh and blood like other people." She saw with malicious triumph that she had him cornered. "Look here, Cora," he said, "it's too late to get out of this now. It wouldn't be fair or right for me to break my word to Mr. Ambrose. But I'll promise this. If you will only keep sober tonight, I'll never go to another party without ... without your permission." "Without my permission!" "Without you, then, if that's what you want me to say." "Oh, yes! I don't think!" "I don't ever break my word," he said simply. "You know that. If I say a thing I try my best to act up to it." "Well, it's not good enough for me, anyhow," she said, with a sudden and jealous knowledge of her own inferiority. "If you leave me tonight, so help me God, I'll get absolutely blind." She saw the horror in his eyes and was glad. It gave her a sense of power. But it brought its own Nemesis. She forgot just then that he alone stood between her and the gutter. "Be reasonable, Cora," he said weakly. There did not seem to be anything else he could say. "I've warned you," she said savagely. "Leave me tonight and you'll see. I'll not be made a mark of by no one, not if I know it." In great distress he retired to his bedroom in order to think things out. He felt that he was much in the wrong. Somehow he did not seem to be keeping to the terms of the bargain. Up to a point Cora had reason and justice on her side. Yet beyond that point was the duty to his friends. In a miserable state of mind he sat on the bed. He was desperately unwilling to undo all the good work of the past six weeks, but it was certain that if he left Cora in her present mood something would happen. Twice he almost made up his mind not to go, but each time he was over-powered by the thought of his friend. It was really impossible to leave him in the lurch without a shadow of excuse. At last, with a sense of acute misery, he came to a decision, or rather the swift passage of time forced it upon him. Suddenly he got off the bed, opened the parcel and spread out the new clothes. BOOK IV DISINTEGRATION I The process of dressing for Henry Harper's first dinner party was not a very agreeable operation. No man could have undertaken it in a worse state of despair. The new links he had bought could only be persuaded with difficulty into the cuffs of the boiled shirt; further trouble presented itself with the collar, and finally, when all the major operations were complete, he had to solve the problem of a white tie or a black one. In the end he chose a black one on the ground that it would be more modest, although he was not sure that it was right. When at last he was complete in every detail, he returned to the sitting-room where his wife still was. She was smoking a cigarette.