"And kept you waiting all that time?"
"That is nothing. Let me explain something before I conclude. Before the war I had an Austrian maid, a woman whom I turned out of the house, and whom my husband at that time did not dare to ask me to reinstate. He had not then spent quite the whole of my fortune. Besides an undoubted intrigue with my husband, I heard afterwards that she only escaped imprisonment as a spy by leaving the country hurriedly just before war was declared. Tonight, my husband, having kept me waiting three hours while he dined with her in Soho, brought her back to the house, announcing that he had engaged her as his secretary."
"Damn the fellow!" Wingate muttered.
"Naturally," she continued, "I declined to sleep under the same roof. The woman remained—and here am I."
"You are here," he repeated. "Thank God for that!"
"It was perhaps imprudent of me," she sighed, "to choose this hotel, but I had a curious feeling of weakness. I felt that I must see some one to whom I could tell what had happened—some friend—before I slept. Perhaps my nerves are going. So I came to you. Did I do wrong?"
"The wrong would be if ever you left me," he declared passionately.
She patted his hand. "Dear friend!"
"The room I will arrange for in a minute or two," he promised. "That is quite easy. But to-morrow—what then?"
"I shall telephone home," she replied. "If that woman is still in the house, I shall go down into the country, and from there I shall write my lawyers and apply for a separation."