It was midwinter, and midnight. My room lay in darkness. Heavy snow was falling. I went to the window and flattened my nose against the pane.
‘What,’ I asked myself, ‘is most like a cat looking out of a window?’
‘A cat looking in at a window,’ answered a silvery voice from the darkness.
Flattened against the self-same pane was another nose, a woman’s. It was the lovely organ of mixed architecture belonging to Philippa! With a low cry of amazement, I broke the pane: it was no idle vision, no case of the ‘horrors;’ the cold, cold nose of my Philippa encountered my own. The ice was now broken; she swept into my chamber, lovelier than ever in her strange unearthly beauty, and a new sealskin coat. Then she seated herself with careless grace, tilting back her chair, and resting her feet on the chimney-piece.
‘Dear Philippa,’ I exclaimed politely, ‘how is your husband?’
‘Husband! I have none,’ she hissed. ‘Tell me, Basil, did you ever hate a fellow no end?’
‘Yes,’ I answered, truly; for, like Mr. Carlyle, I just detested most people, and him who had robbed me of Philippa most of all.
‘Do you know what he did, Basil? _He insisted on having a latch-key!_ Did you ever hate a man?’
I threw out my arms. My heart was full of bitterness.
‘He did more! He has refused to pay my last quarter’s salary. Basil, didn’t you ever hate a man?’
My brain reeled at these repeated outrages.
‘And where are you staying at present, Philippa? I hope you are pretty comfortable?’ I inquired, anxiously.
Philippa went on: ‘My husband as was has chucked me. I was about to have a baby. I bored him. I was in the way--in the family-way. Basil, did you ever hate a fellow? If not, read this letter.’
She threw a letter towards me. She chucked it with all her old gracious dexterity. It was dated from Monte Carlo, and ran thus:--
‘As we don’t seem quite to hit it off, I think I may as well finish this business of our marriage. The shortest way to make things clear to your very limited intelligence is to assure you that you are not my wife at all. Before I married you I was the husband of the Live Mermaid. She has died since then, and I might have married you over and over again; but I was not quite so infatuated. I shall just run across and settle up about this little affair on Wednesday. As you are five miles from the station, as the weather is perfectly awful, as moreover I am a luxurious, self-indulgent baronet and as this story would never get on unless I walked, don’t send to meet me. I would _rather_ walk.’