Then there was this infernal detective. Bechamel had told his wife he was going to Davos to see Carter. To that he had fancied she was reconciled, but how she would take this exploit was entirely problematical. She was a woman of peculiar moral views, and she measured marital infidelity largely by its proximity to herself. Out of her sight, and more particularly out of the sight of the other women of her set, vice of the recognised description was, perhaps, permissible to those contemptible weaklings, men, but this was Evil on the High Roads. She was bound to make a fuss, and these fusses invariably took the final form of a tightness of money for Bechamel. Albeit, and he felt it was heroic of him to resolve so, it was worth doing if it was to be done. His imagination worked on a kind of matronly Valkyrie, and the noise of pursuit and vengeance was in the air. The idyll still had the front of the stage. That accursed detective, it seemed, had been thrown off the scent, and that, at any rate, gave a night’s respite. But things must be brought to an issue forthwith. By eight o’clock in the evening, in a little dining-room in the Vicuna Hotel, Bognor, the crisis had come, and Jessie, flushed and angry in the face and with her heart sinking, faced him again for her last struggle with him. He had tricked her this time, effectually, and luck had been on his side. She was booked as Mrs. Beaumont. Save for her refusal to enter their room, and her eccentricity of eating with unwashed hands, she had so far kept up the appearances of things before the waiter. But the dinner was grim enough. Now in turn she appealed to his better nature and made extravagant statements of her plans to fool him. He was white and vicious by this time, and his anger quivered through his pose of brilliant wickedness. “I will go to the station,” she said. “I will go back—” “The last train for anywhere leaves at 7.42.” “I will appeal to the police—” “You don’t know them.” “I will tell these hotel people.” “They will turn you out of doors. You’re in such a thoroughly false position now. They don’t understand unconventionality, down here.” She stamped her foot. “If I wander about the streets all night—” she said. “You who have never been out alone after dusk? Do you know what the streets of a charming little holiday resort are like—” “I don’t care,” she said. “I can go to the clergyman here.” “He’s a charming man. Unmarried. And men are really more alike than you think. And anyhow—” “Well?” “How _can_ you explain the last two nights to anyone now? The mischief is done, Jessie.” “You _cur_,” she said, and suddenly put her hand to her breast. He thought she meant to faint, but she stood, with the colour gone from her face. “No,” he said. “I love you.” “Love!” said she. “Yes—love.” “There are ways yet,” she said, after a pause.