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Tietjens said:

'I know you, sir, to be the smartest general of division in the British Army. I leave you to draw your own conclusions as to why I said what I did...' He had told the exact truth, but he was not sorry to be disbelieved.

The General said:

'Then I'll take it that you tell me a lie meaning me to know that it's a lie. That's quite proper. I take it you mean to keep the woman officially out of it. But look here, Chrissie'--his tone took a deeper seriousness--If the woman that's come between you and Sylvia--that's broken up your home, damn it, for that's what it is!--is little Miss Wannop...'

'Her name was Julia Mandelstein,' Tietjens said.

The General said:

'Yes! Yes! Of course!...But if it is the little Wannop girl and it's not gone too far...Put her back...Put her back, as you used to be a good boy! It would be too hard on the mother...'

Tietjens, said:

'General! I give you my word...'

The General said:

'I'm not asking any questions, my boy; I'm talking now. You've told me the story you want told and it's the story I'll tell for you! But that little piece is...she used to be!...as straight as a die. I daresay you know better than I. Of course when they get among the wild women there's no knowing what happens to them. They say they're all whores...I beg your pardon, if you like the girl...'

'Is Miss Wannop,' Tietjens asked, 'the girl who demonstrates?'

'Sandbach said,' the General went on, 'that he couldn't see from where he was whether that girl was the same as the one in the Haymarket. But he thought it was...He was pretty certain.'

'As he's married your sister,' Tietjens said, 'one can't impugn his taste in women.'

'I say again, I'm not asking,' the General said. 'But I do say again too: put her back. Her father was a great friend of your father's: or your father was a great admirer of his. They say he was the most brilliant brain of the party.'

'Of course I know who Professor Wannop was,' Tietjens said. 'There's nothing you could tell me about him.'

'I daresay not,' the General said drily. 'Then you know that he didn't leave a farthing when he died and the rotten Liberal Government wouldn't put his wife and children on the Civil List because he'd sometimes written for a Tory paper. And you know that the mother has had a deuced hard row to hoe and has only just turned the corner. If she can be said to have turned it. I know Claudine takes them all the peaches she can cadge out of Paul's gardener.'

Tietjens was about to say that Mrs Wannop, the mother, had written the only novel worth reading since the eighteenth century...But the General went on:

'Listen to me, my boy...If you can't get on without women...I should have thought Sylvia was good enough. But I know what we men are...I don't set up to be a saint. I heard a woman in the promenade of the Empire say once that it was the likes of them that saved the lives and figures of all the virtuous women of the country. And I daresay it's true...But choose a girl that you can set up in a tobacco shop and do your courting in the back parlour. Not in the Haymarket...Heaven knows if you can afford it. That's your affair. You appear to have been sold up. And from what Sylvia's let drop to Claudine...'

'I don't believe,' Tietjens said, 'that Sylvia's said anything to Lady Claudine...She's too straight.'

'I didn't say "said,"' the General exclaimed, 'I particularly said "let drop." And perhaps I oughtn't to have said as much as that, but you know what devils for ferreting out women are. And Claudine's worse than any woman I ever knew...'

'And, of course, she's had Sandbach to help,' Tietjens said.

'Oh, that fellow's worse than any woman,' the General exclaimed.

'Then what does the whole indictment amount to?' Tietj ens asked.

'Oh, hang it,' the General brought out, 'I'm not a beastly detective, I only want a plausible story to tell Claudine. Or not even plausible. An obvious lie as long as it shows you're not flying in the face of society--as walking up