"I'm awfully sorry," I said, not knowing what else to say.

The Colonel gulped down his whisky. He was a tall, lean man
of fifty, with a drooping moustache and grey hair. He had
pale blue eyes and a weak mouth. I remembered from my
previous meeting with him that he had a foolish face, and was
proud of the fact that for the ten years before he left the
army he had played polo three days a week.

"I don't suppose Mrs. Strickland wants to be bothered with me
just now," I said. "Will you tell her how sorry I am?
If there's anything I can do. I shall be delighted to do it."

He took no notice of me.

"I don't know what's to become of her. And then there are the
children. Are they going to live on air? Seventeen years."

"What about seventeen years?"

"They've been married," he snapped. "I never liked him.
Of course he was my brother-in-law, and I made the best of it.
Did you think him a gentleman? She ought never to have
married him."

"Is it absolutely final?"

"There's only one thing for her to do, and that's to divorce
him. That's what I was telling her when you came in.
'Fire in with your petition, my dear Amy,' I said. `You owe it