thorne. She was very charming. I saw she was afraid of Mrs. Golden. It seems that Mrs. Golden had wanted Denisthorne herself years before. In fact, she seems to have wanted almost everybody. You can see the situation. She had been lying in wait to get back at Mrs. Denisthorne. And my wife came back and sued me for divorce, and Denisthorne came back ———”
Dane paused for a few seconds.
“No man has ever made me feel such a beastly rotter as Denisthorne did. It always hurts me to think of it. He understood too much. He forgave his wife. He forgave me. And he cared, cared awfully. He begged me to let the thing go through without a fight. It would have been silly to fight, anyway. We had been too well trapped. So it went through quietly. The papers printed nothing but the bare fact. I saw Denisthorne wanted his wife, and I saw she really wanted him. I told him I would get out quietly. But I reckoned without Mrs. Golden. And this is where the rest of the story begins.
“I was living in the Manipouri Hotel. One wet afternoon I went out of my room leaving it unlocked, and went to the room of an Australian who had just come, to plan with him that Lake Ada walking trip, which I wanted to do before I left the south. I yarned with him about two hours, and we drank, drank too much, and I had been pretty reckless for some time. It was well after six o’clock when I remembered I had to go out to an early dinner with some newspaper men. I went back to my rooms and found Mrs. Golden there. What I ever did to that woman to make her so mad I do not know. I had been courteous to her, but I swear I never gave her the least encouragement. I couldn’t. She was the last thing in the world I could bear. She was fat and gross! Horrible! Rapacious! And somehow she had gone mad about
