"Well, both of them. Didn't Philip tell you?"
"He didn't say much. He wasn't gone much more than half an hour—couldn't have had more than ten minutes with him—and then he came back and said he was taking him away the next day but one."
"Then that was while you were still at the studio?"
"Yes. It was then I told him I'd had enough of it and was coming back here. He told me not to be an ass, but I don't call that being an ass. I don't mean there was a row, but I'd got my back up a bit, and I didn't feel like asking him questions. I was sorry for him too in a way. You see, that morning after his wife came up——"
"What!" I exclaimed in surprise. "Has his wife been up since she left that morning?" (This, as I have told you, was the first I had heard of it.)
"Yes. She turned up late one night. I was out—I'd gone for a walk Roehampton way just to think things over—that was before Audrey'd told me she——" He stopped, as if distrusting his voice.
"Yes?" I gently urged him.
"About his wife coming up. I didn't see her till next morning. I expect she was tired out with the journey; anyway, her face was as gray as that Michelet paper there. And Philip was done in too. That's why I didn't want to make any bother. I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. I don't know what's happened to us all."
I could have told him. It was the Case that had happened.
"Mrs. Esdaile too—she was just the same——"