“She keeps her telephone beside her bed, and so she must answer; and lo! I will insult her intolerably.” The taxi stopped, and very soon the receiver was to his ear, while I leered at him from the depths of an arm-chair. “Have some brandy,” said Tarlyon, but I sneered at him. But what he said down the telephone, I cannot repeat. These things should only be spoken of privately, as between man and man. All I can do is to give a brief outline of his speech and a summary of the conclusions at which he arrived. He spoke at length of her character, of which he seemed to take an unfavourable view; he took grave exception to the manner of her life; and he begged her to hold him excused, in future, from any closer relationship than that of a distant acquaintance. She must have said he was drunk, for he denied any undue excess, while reserving to himself the right to think she was probably a secret drinker. He began, I thought, rather subtly: on a matter which has been discussed between ladies and gentlemen ever since Solomon took a fancy to the Queen of Sheba and put off all dinner engagements for a week. In the gentlest way Tarlyon begged to be excused from dining with her on the following night. No, it was not that he had discovered a previous engagement; no, he couldn’t say that. The truth was, he said, that he had found something better to do; he hadn’t, he added, had to look very hard. He then proceeded to give his reasons for never wishing to see her again, and these he deduced (_a_) from flaws in her character, (_b_) from fissures in her temperament, and (_c_) from structural errors in her personal appearance. He pointed out that he was putting himself to this trouble only for her good, and in memory of his long friendship with her late husband, whom he had known ever since they were at Oxford and Cambridge together. I can only put down the fact that she did not ring off before she did to some fatal fascination in his voice, which was throughout smooth and reasonable in tone.