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She rang the bell and bade Hullo Central sweep the plateful from the carpet; Hullo Central, tall and dark, looking with wide-open eyes, motionless at nothing.

Sylvia went along the bookshelves, pausing over a book back, 'Vitare Hominum Notiss...' in gilt, irregular capitals pressed deep into the old leather. At the first long window she supported herself by the blind-cord. She looked out and back into the room.

'There's that veiled woman!' she said, 'going into eleven...It's two o'clock, of course...'

She looked at her husband's back hard, the clumsy khaki back that was getting round-shouldered now. Hard! She wasn't going to miss a motion or a stiffening.

'I've found out who it is!' she said, 'and who she goes to. I got it out of the porter.' She waited. Then she added:

It's the woman you travelled down from Bishop Auckland with. On the day war was declared.'

Tietjens turned solidly round in his chair. She knew he would do that out of stiff politeness, so it meant nothing.

His face was whitish in the pale light, but it was always whitish since he had come back from France and passed his day in a tin hut among dust heaps. He said:

'So you saw me!' But that, too, was mere politeness.

She said:

'Of course the whole crowd of us from Claudine's saw you! It was old Campion who said she was a Mrs...I've forgotten the name.'

Tietjens said:

'I imagined he would know her. I saw him looking in from the corridor!'

She said:

'Is she your mistress, or only Macmaster's, or the mistress of both of you? It would be like you to have a mistress in common...She's got a mad husband, hasn't she? A clergyman.'

Tietjens said:

'She hasn't!'

Sylvia checked suddenly in her next questions, and Tietjens, who in these discussions never manoeuvred for position, said:

'She has been Mrs Macmaster over six months.' Sylvia said:

'She married him then the day after her husband's death.'

She drew a long breath and added:

'I don't care...She has been coming here every Friday for three years...I tell you I shall expose her unless that little beast pays you to-morrow the money he owes you...God knows you need it!' She said then hurriedly, for she didn't know how Tietjens might take that proposition:

'Mrs Wannop rang up this morning to know who was...oh!...the evil genius of the Congress of Vienna. Who, by the by, is Mrs Wannop's secretary? She wants to see you this afternoon. About war babies!'

Tietjens said:

'Mrs Wannop hasn't got a secretary. It's her daughter who does the ringing-up.'

'The girl,' Sylvia said, 'you were so potty about at that horrible afternoon Macmaster gave. Has she had a war baby by you? They all say she's your mistress.'

Tietj ens said:

'No, Miss Wannop isn't my mistress. Her mother has had a commission to write an article about war babies. I told her yesterday there weren't any war babies to speak of, and she's upset because she won't be able to make a sensational article. She wants to try to make me change my mind.'

'It was Miss Wannop at that beastly affair of your friend's?' Sylvia asked. 'And I suppose the woman who received was Mrs What's-er-name: your other mistress. An unpleasant show. I don't think much of your taste. The one where all the horrible geniuses in London were? There was a man like a rabbit talked to me about how to write poetry.'

'That's no good as an identification of the party,' Tietjens said. 'Macmaster gives a party every Friday, not Saturday. He has for years. Mrs Macmaster goes there every Friday. To act as hostess. She has for years. Miss Wannop goes there every Friday after she has done work for her mother. To support Mrs Macmaster...'

'She has for years!' Sylvia mocked him. 'And you go there every Friday! to croodle over Miss Wannop. Oh, Christopher!'--she adopted a mock pathetic voice--'I never did have much opinion of your taste...but not that! Don't let it be that. Put her back. She's too young for you...'

'All the geniuses in London,' Tietjens continued equably, 'go to Macmaster's every Friday.