He searched back, trying to piece together phrases which would indicate the correct answer. There was her disturbing confession about having given away bits of herself, little bits of herself in wrong directions. There was her reticence as to the ownership of the car and the way in which she had tried to prevent a meeting. There was her sympathy for Maisie's matrimonial excesses; her unnatural tolerance for Adair; her reiterated excuse for the current love-madness, that people had the right at any cost to be happy; and the eagerness with which she had seized on his own words, "to recover our lost years by violence." In the silence of his brain he heard her voice pleading, urgent with pain and underlying terror, "Don't you see why I don't condemn? I'm sorry for you, for myself, for everybody." His knowledge of the world told him that impassioned latitudinarians were most fre
quently found among those who had themselves offended the conventions. Whatever Terry knew or did not know, she was certainly aware that a match between herself and General Braithwaite was completely off the map and would be regarded by every one who counted as a mésalliance.
And what did she know? Not that Braithwaite had been a valet—most decidedly not that he had been his valet; at most she suspected that they had been acquainted when Braithwaite had moved in humbler circles. Had she been possessed of the exact truth, she would never have borrowed a car from that quarter to meet her ex-lover on his home-coming. She had been testing—trying to discover. She had scented a mystery—one for the solving of which none of the General's explanations had proved convincing. Then had come the unforeseen encounter outside the War Office and Braithwaite's falsehood, which even Terry had detected. "You mistake me. It's the first time I've had the pleasure." What was the man's game? Did he hope to erase his old identity? Did he think——
At this point Tabs' patience broke down. "Dash it all," he muttered, "if there hadn't been a war, the fellow would have been running my bath-water at this moment."
If there hadn't been a war! But there had; and this was only one of the many preposterous situations which had resulted from it. Terry was right in at least one thing that she had said—the world was upside down and walking on its head.
As he lay there thinking, with the topmost
branches of the trees in the Square weaving a tracery of green shadows against his windows, a sudden inspiration came to him. He sat up. "By Jove, I've got it. Terry's proud as Lucifer. I can stop this nonsense at any time by telling her who her lover was. Braithwaite will have to call to see me; I can force him to it. When he calls, the door will be opened by Ann. I can hold the threat over him that, if he doesn't promise to break with Terry, I'll expose him."
He went across to his writing-table, selected a pen and wrote:—
General Braithwaite,
The War Office,
Whitehall,
London.
Sir: