***** And so it happened that, some days afterwards, while Cahusac was sitting with Hugh before their hotel at Avignon, and opening the letters which the swarthy waiter had just brought, he was astonished to see Hugh start to his feet, and, white and trembling with passion, stare at a communication which he dashed presently upon the table. “The villain--the damned villain!” Cahusac queried mutely through his gold spectacles. “He is bringing an action for divorce--for divorce against her--do you understand?” “Don’t shout so, man, and sit down,” said Cahusac, quietly. Hugh obeyed mechanically, tore at his great moustache, and went on in a voice rendered hoarse by his effort to keep it within conversational tones: “He believes that story. Is proceeding on the strength of it. A woman who idolised him, made him her god---the veriest cur would have understood. My God! Cahusac, I’ll go back at once and shoot him on sight. He doesn’t deserve to live. To cast off a woman like that. By heaven, I’ll kill him.” “Don’t talk like a madman,” said Cahusac. “I can’t sit here. Come for a turn with me. I shall be better walking.” Cahusac stuffed his correspondence into his pocket and accompanied him out of doors. They passed beneath the frowning mass of the old Palace of the Popes, with its innumerable towers and machicolated battlements, and reached the outer boulevards. The mid-day sun beat fiercely down. Below them lay the blue Rhone, winding through this garden of Southern France. The sun, the scene, and Cahusac’s quiet yet sympathetic common sense gradually calmed Hugh’s blazing anger. “Had you no suspicion that it might come to this?” asked Cahusac, as they walked along under the trees. “None whatever. Do you think if I had, I should have loitered about here? I knew he had quarrelled with her. She told me. I could see nothing unnatural in it. There are some sacrifices beyond the power of the average man. She thought he was equal to herself. I didn’t. At least for a day or two I did--just after the trial. Then came disillusion. You were right in what you said about knowledge of men. One can only test them by tempest. This one has been tested. He’s no better, no worse, than that fellow over there with the white umbrella and the rolls of fat at the back of his neck. In fact, I was obliged, after a time, to sympathise with him. What right had I to expect that a man would make such a sacrifice for me? I was powerless to reconcile them. It was her urgent wish that I should disappear for a few weeks--until things got settled. But I never, for one second, thought he doubted. We have been friends from childhood, he and I--intimates. He knows every syllable that has ever passed between his wife and myself. A thunderbolt out of this blue sky could not appall me more than this ghastly news.” “To tell you a secret,” said Cahusac, “I saw the clay feet of the idol long ago. A good fellow in his way--the average sensual man.”