Chapter 26 - Page 2

in that way.
What would it be, then, if she were to walk into the room?

Thank heaven that need never happen! He was sufficiently
informed as to French divorce proceedings to know that they
would not necessitate a confrontation with his wife; and with
ordinary luck, and some precautions, he might escape even a
distant glimpse of her. He did not mean to remain in Paris more
than a few days; and during that time it would be easy--knowing,
as he did, her tastes and Altringham's--to avoid the places
where she was likely to be met. He did not know where she was
living, but imagined her to be staying with Mrs. Melrose, or
some other rich friend, or else lodged, in prospective
affluence, at the Nouveau Luxe, or in a pretty flat of her own.
Trust Susy--ah, the pang of it--to "manage"!

His first visit was to his lawyer's; and as he walked through
the familiar streets each approaching face, each distant figure
seemed hers. The obsession was intolerable. It would not last,
of course; but meanwhile he had the exposed sense of a fugitive
in a nightmare, who feels himself the only creature visible in a
ghostly and besetting multitude. The eye of the metropolis
seemed fixed on him in an immense unblinking stare.

At the lawyer's he was told that, as a first step to freedom, he
must secure a domicile in Paris. He had of course known of this
necessity: he had seen too many friends through the Divorce
Court, in one country or another, not to be fairly familiar with
the procedure. But the fact presented a different aspect as
soon as he tried to relate it to himself and Susy: it was as
though Susy's personality were a medium through which events
still took on a transfiguring colour. He found the "domicile"
that very day: a tawdrily furnished rez-de-chaussee, obviously
destined to far different uses. And as he sat there, after the
concierge had discreetly withdrawn with the first quarter's
payment in her pocket, and stared about him at the vulgar plushy
place, he burst out laughing at what it was about to figure in
the eyes of the law: a Home, and a Home desecrated by his own
act! The Home in which he and Susy had reared their precarious
bliss, and seen it crumble at the brutal touch of his
unfaithfulness and his cruelty--for he had been told that he
must be cruel to her as well as unfaithful! He looked at the
walls hung with sentimental photogravures, at the shiny bronze
"nudes," the moth-eaten animal-skins and the bedizened bed-and
once more the unreality, the impossibility, of all that was
happening to him entered like a drug into his veins.

To rouse himself he stood up, turned the key on the hideous
place, and returned to his lawyer's. He knew that in the hard
dry atmosphere of