and it proved to be a three-shilling fare, for, running when he was in
breath and walking when he was out of it, he took me to West Kensington.

I discharged my cab, and from across the street watched William's
incomprehensible behaviour. He had stopped at a dingy row of workmen's
houses, and knocked at the darkened window of one of them. Presently a
light showed. So far as I could see, some one pulled up the blind and
for ten minutes talked to William. I was uncertain whether they talked,
for the window was not opened, and I felt that, had William spoken
through the glass loud enough to be heard inside, I must have heard him
too. Yet he nodded and beckoned. I was still bewildered when, by setting
off the way he had come, he gave me the opportunity of going home.

Knowing from the talk of the club what the lower orders are, could I
doubt that this was some discreditable love-affair of William's?
His solicitude for his wife had been mere pretence; so far as it was
genuine, it meant that he feared she might recover. He probably told her
that he was detained nightly in the club till three.

I was miserable next day, and blamed the deviled kidneys for it. Whether
William was unfaithful to his wife was nothing to me, but I had two
plain reasons for insisting on his going straight home from his club:
the one that, as he had made me lose a bet, I must punish him; the other
that he could wait upon me better if he went to bed betimes.

Yet I did not question him. There was something in his face that--Well,
I seemed to see his dying wife in it.

I was so out of sorts that I could eat no dinner. I left the club.
Happening to stand for some time at the foot of the street, I chanced