“ ‘You see, Bill,’ she answered in a flat, dead voice, ‘my husband is very fond of me—as a stopgap. After most of his episodes he honours me with his attentions for two or three days.’
“That was the devil of it—he didn’t intend to let her divorce him. She formed an excellent hostess for his house, and for the rest there were always les autres. And he wanted her, too, because he couldn’t get her, and that made him mad.”
The Barrister leant forward, and the firelight flickered on his thin, ascetic face.
“Such was the state of affairs when I went to stay. The particular lady at the time who was being honoured by Henry Granger was a shining light in musical comedy—Nelly Jones, shall we call her? It is very far from her real name. If possible, he had been more open over this affair than usual; everyone who knew the Grangers in London knew about it—everyone. He had twice dined with her at the same restaurant at which his wife was entertaining, once deliberately selecting the next table.”
“What an unmitigated swine!” cried the Ordinary Man.
“He was,” agreed the Barrister briefly. “But even that was not sufficient to satisfy the gentleman. He proceeded to do a thing which put him for ever outside the pale. He brought this girl to a reception of his wife’s at his own house.
“It was the night that I arrived. She had fixed up one of those ghastly entertainments which are now, thank Heaven, practically extinct. Somebody sings and nobody listens, and you meet everybody you particularly want to avoid. Mercifully I ran into an old pal, also of your calling, Actor-man—Violet Seymour. No reason why I should disguise her name at any rate. She was not acting at the moment, and we sat in a sort of alcove-place at the top of the stairs, on the same landing as the reception-room.
“ ‘There’s going to be a break here soon, Bill,’ she said to me after a while. ‘Ruth is going to snap.’
“ ‘Poor girl!’ I answered. ‘But what the devil can one do, Violet?’
“ ‘Nothing,’ she said fiercely, ‘except alter your abominably unjust laws. Why can’t she get a divorce, Bill? It’s vile—utterly vile.’