Out of her sight, and more particularly out of the sight
of the other women of her set, vice of the recognised description
was, perhaps, permissible to those contemptible weaklings, men,
but this was Evil on the High Roads. She was bound to make a
fuss, and these fusses invariably took the final form of a
tightness of money for Bechamel. Albeit, and he felt it was
heroic of him to resolve so, it was worth doing if it was to be
done. His imagination worked on a kind of matronly Valkyrie, and
the noise of pursuit and vengeance was in the air. The idyll
still had the front of the stage. That accursed detective, it
seemed, had been thrown off the scent, and that, at any rate,
gave a night's respite. But things must be brought to an issue
forthwith.
By eight o'clock in the evening, in a little dining-room in the
Vicuna Hotel, Bognor, the crisis had come, and Jessie, flushed
and angry in the face and with her heart sinking, faced him again
for her last st,ruggle with him. He had tricked her this time,
effectually, and luck had been on his side. She was booked as
Mrs. Beaumont. Save for her refusal to enter their room, and her
eccentricity of eating with unwashed hands, she had so far kept
up the appearances of things before the waiter. But the dinner
was grim enough. Now in turn she appealed to his better nature
and made extravagant statements of her plans to fool him.
He was white and vicious by this time, and his anger quivered
through his pose of brilliant wickedness.
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