"I'd come back in fourteen seconds if she wanted me," said Beale fervently.
"You're hopeless," said Kitson, "you asked how you could get a divorce. I presume you want one."
"Of course I do. I want to undo the whole of this horrible tangle. It's absurd and undignified. Can nothing be done without Miss Cresswell knowing?"
"Nothing can be done without your wife's knowledge," said Kitson.
He seemed to take a fiendish pleasure in reminding the unhappy young man of his misfortune.
"I am not blaming you," he said more soberly, "I blame myself. When I took this trust from poor John Millinborn I never realized all that it meant or all the responsibility it entailed. How could I imagine that the detective I employed to protect the girl from fortune hunters would marry her? I am not complaining," he said hastily, seeing the wrath rise in Beale's face, "it is very unfortunate, and you are as much the victim of circumstances as I. But unhappily we have not been the real victims."
"I suppose," said Beale, looking up at the ceiling, "if I were one of those grand little mediæval knights or one of those gallant gentlemen one reads about I should blow my brains out."
"That would be a solution," said Mr. Kitson, "but we should still have to explain to your wife that she was a widow."
He took two from his vest pocket and handed one to his companion, and his shrewd old eyes twinkled.
"It's years and years since I read a romantic story," he said, "and I haven't followed the trend of modern literature very closely, but I think that your job is to sail in and make the lady love you."
"Do you mean that? Pshaw! It's absurd! It's ridiculous! She would never love me."
"I don't see why anybody should, least of all your wife," said Kitson, "but it would certainly simplify matters."
"Marry her all over again," said Kitson, sending a big ring of smoke into the air, "there's no law against it. You can marry as many times as you like, providing you marry the same woman."
"But, suppose--suppose she loves somebody else?" asked Beale hoarsely.
"Why then it will be tough on you," said Kitson, "but tougher on her. Your business is to see that she doesn't love somebody else."
A look of infinite weariness passed across Kitson's face. He removed his glasses and put them carefully into their case.