For once Lord Holme showed a certain adroitness. Instead of replying to his wife he retorted: “You meant me to find Ulford here! That’s a good ‘un! Why, you tried all you knew to keep him out.” “Yes.” “Well, then?” “I wanted--but you’d never understand.” “He does,” said Lord Holme. He laughed again, got up and walked about the room, fingering his bandages. Then suddenly, he turned on Lady Holme and said savagely: “And you do.” “I?” “Yes, you. There’s lots of fellers that would--” “Stop!” said Lady Holme, in a voice of sharp decision. She got up too. She felt that she could not say what she meant to say sitting down. “Fritz,” she added, “you’re a fool. You may be worse. I believe you are. But one thing’s certain--you’re a fool. Even in wickedness you’re a blunderer.” “And what are you?” he said. “I!” she answered, coming a step nearer. “I’m not wicked.” A sudden, strange desire came to her, a desire--as she had slangily expressed it to Robin Pierce--to “trot out” the white angel whom she had for so long ignored or even brow-beaten. Was the white angel there? Some there were who believed so. Robin Pierce, Sir Donald, perhaps others. And these few believers gave Lady Holme courage. She remembered them, she relied on them at this moment. “I’m not wicked,” she repeated. She looked into her husband’s face. “Don’t you know that?” He was silent. “Perhaps you’d rather I was,” she continued. “Don’t men prefer it?” He stared first at her, then at the carpet. A puzzled look came into his face. “But I don’t care,” she said, gathering resolution, and secretly calling, calling on the hidden woman, yet always with a doubt as to whether she was there in her place of concealment. “I don’t care. I can’t change my nature because of that. And surely--surely there must be some men who prefer refinement to vulgarity, purity to--” “Ulford, eh?” he interrupted. The retort struck like a whip on Lady Holme’s temper. She forgot the believers in the angel and the angel too. “How dare you?” she exclaimed. “As if I--” He took up the latch-key and thrust it into her face. His sense of physical triumph was obviously dying away, his sense of personal outrage returning. “Good women don’t do things like that,” he said. “If it was known in London you’d be done for.” “And you--may you do what you like openly, brazenly?” “Men’s different,” he said.