“Directly we had entered the room Fyne announced the result by saying ‘Nothing’ in the same tone as at the gate on his return from the railway station. And as then Mrs. Fyne uttered an incisive ‘It’s what I’ve said,’ which might have been the veriest echo of her words in the garden. We three looked at each other as if on the brink of a disclosure. I don’t know whether she was vexed at my presence. It could hardly be called intrusion—could it? Little Fyne began it. It had to go on. We stood before her, plastered with the same mud (Fyne was a sight!), scratched by the same brambles, conscious of the same experience. Yes. Before her. And she looked at us with folded arms, with an extraordinary fullness of assumed responsibility. I addressed her.
“ ‘You don’t believe in an accident, Mrs. Fyne, do you?’
“She shook her head in curt negation while, caked in mud and inexpressibly serious-faced, Fyne seemed to be backing her up with all the weight of his solemn presence. Nothing more absurd could be conceived. It was delicious. And I went on in deferential accents: ‘Am I to understand then that you entertain the theory of suicide?’
“I don’t know that I am liable to fits of delirium but by a sudden and alarming aberration while waiting for her answer I became mentally aware of three trained dogs dancing on their hind legs. I don’t know why. Perhaps because of the pervading solemnity. There’s nothing more solemn on earth than a dance of trained dogs.
“ ‘She has chosen to disappear. That’s all.’
“In these words Mrs. Fyne answered me. The aggressive tone was too much for my endurance. In an instant I found myself out of the dance and down on all-fours so to speak, with liberty to bark and bite.
“ ‘The devil she has,’ I cried. ‘Has chosen to … Like this, all at once, anyhow, regardless … I’ve had the privilege of meeting that reckless and brusque young lady and I must say that with her air of an angry victim …’
“ ‘Precisely,’ Mrs. Fyne said very unexpectedly like a steel trap going off. I stared at her. How provoking she was! So I went on to finish my tirade. ‘She struck me at first sight as the most inconsiderate wrongheaded girl that I ever …’
“ ‘Why should a girl be more considerate than anyone else? More than any man, for instance?’ inquired Mrs. Fyne with a still greater assertion of responsibility in her bearing.
“Of course I exclaimed at this, not very loudly it is true, but forcibly. Were then the feelings of friends, relations and even of strangers to be disregarded? I asked Mrs. Fyne if she did not think it was a sort of duty to show elementary consideration not only for the natural feelings but even for the prejudices of one’s fellow-creatures.
“Her answer knocked me over.
“ ‘Not for a woman.’
“Just like that. I confess that I went down flat. And while in that collapsed state I learned the true nature of Mrs. Fyne’s feminist doctrine. It was not political, it was not social. It was a knock-me-down doctrine—a practical individualistic doctrine. You would not thank me for expounding it to you at large. Indeed I think that she herself did not enlighten me fully. There must have been things not fit for a man to hear. But shortly, and as far as my bewilderment allowed me to grasp its naive atrociousness, it was something like this: that no consideration, no delicacy, no tenderness, no scruples should stand in the way of a woman (who by the mere fact of her sex was the predestined victim of conditions created by men’s selfish passions, their vices and their abominable tyranny) from taking the shortest cut towards securing for herself the easiest possible existence. She had even the right to go out of existence without considering anyone’s feelings or convenience since some women’s existences were made impossible by the shortsighted baseness of men.
“I looked at her, sitting before the lamp at one o’clock in the morning, with her mature, smooth-cheeked face of masculine shape robbed of its freshness by fatigue; at her eyes dimmed by this senseless vigil. I looked also at Fyne; the mud was drying on him; he was obviously tired. The weariness of solemnity. But he preserved an unflinching, endorsing, gravity of expression. Endorsing it all as became a good, convinced husband.
“ ‘Oh! I see,’ I said. ‘No consideration … Well I hope you like it.’
“They amused me beyond the wildest imaginings of which I was capable. After the first shock, you understand, I recovered very quickly. The order of the world was safe enough. He was a civil servant and she his good and faithful wife. But when it comes to dealing with human beings anything, anything may be expected. So even my astonishment did not last very long. How far she developed and illustrated that conscienceless and austere doctrine to the girlfriends, who were mere transient shadows to her husband, I could not tell. Any length I supposed. And he looked on, acquiesced, approved, just for that very reason—because these pretty girls were but shadows to him. O! Most virtuous Fyne! He cast his eyes down. He didn’t like it. But I eyed him with hidden animosity for he had got me to run after him under somewhat false pretences.
“Mrs. Fyne had only smiled at me very expressively, very
