her time trying to do any little thing she can to make me comfortable, hunts about for any little thing she can do for me.  It’s pathetic, you know.  At least, it’s pathetic to me.  Jumped at this sudden idea of mine of getting away for a couple of days.  Said it would please her more than anything in the world to know I was right away from it all for a bit.  Fussed over me packing up and all that, you know.  Pathetic.  Frightfully.  Look, just to show you how she hunts about for anything to do for me—­said my old straw hat was much too shabby for Brighton and would I get her some stuff, oxalic acid, and let her clean it up for me.  That sort of little trifle.  As a matter of fact she made such a shocking mess of the hat that I hardly liked to wear it.  Couldn’t hurt her feelings, though.  Chucked it into the sea when I got here and bought this one.  Make a funny story for her when I get back about how it blew off.  That’s the sort of life we lead together, Hapgood.  She always trying to do little things for me and I trying to think out little jokes for her to try and cheer her up.  Give you another example.  Just when I had brought her the stuff for my hat.  Met me with, Had I lost anything?  Made a mystery of it.  Said I was to guess.  Guessed at last that it must be my cigarette case.  It was.  She’d found it lying about and took me to show where she’d put it for safety—­in the back of the clock in my room.  Said I was always to look there for any little valuables I might miss, and wanted me to know how she liked to be careful of my things like that.  Fussing over me, d’you see?  Trying to make it seem we were living normal, ordinary lives.

“’That’s the sort of life we lead together, Hapgood—­together; but the life I’m caught up in, the things that are happening with me, that I’m right in the middle of, that I felt I had to get away from for a bit—­astounding, Hapgood, astounding, amazing....’

“I’m trying to give you exactly his own words, old man.  I want you to get this business just exactly as I got it.  Old Sabre turned to me with that—­with that ’astounding, amazing’—­turned and faced me and said: 

“’Hapgood, I’m finding out the most extraordinary things about this life as we’ve made it and as we live it.  Hapgood, if I kept forty women in different parts of London and made no secret of it, nothing would be said.  People would know I was rather a shameless lot, my little ways would be an open secret, but nothing would be said.  I should be received everywhere.  But I’m thought to have brought one woman into my house and I’m banned.  I’m unspeakable.  Forty, flagrantly, outside, and I’m still a received member of society.  People are sorry for my wife, or pretend to be, but I’m still all right, a bit of a rake, you know, but a decent enough chap.  But I take pity on one poor girl because she clings to her motherhood although she’s unmarried, and I’m beyond the pale.  I’m unspeakable.  Amazing.  Do you say it’s not absolutely astounding?