Christopher had Valentine Wannop in that town. That was perhaps why he elected to remain there. She asked:
"Why does Christopher stay on in this God-forsaken hole? . . . The inglorious base, they call it. . . . "
"Because he's jolly well got to. . . . " Major Perowne said. "He's got to do what he's told. . . . "
She said: "Christopher! . . . You mean to say they'd keep a man like Christopher anywhere he didn't want to be . . . "
"They'd jolly well knock spots off him if he went away," Major Perowne exclaimed. . . . "What the deuce do you think your blessed fellow is? . . . The King of England? . . . " He added with a sudden sombre ferocity: "They'd shoot him like anybody else if he bolted. . . . What do you think?"
She said: "But all that wouldn't prevent his having a girl in this town?"
"Well, he hasn't got one," Perowne said. "He sticks up in that blessed old camp of his like a blessed she-chicken sitting on addled eggs. . . . That's what they say of him. . . . I don't know anything about the fellow. . . . " "
Listening vindictively and indolently, she thought she caught in his droning tones a touch of the homicidal lunacy that had used to underlie his voice in the bedroom at Yssingueux. The fellow had undoubtedly about him a touch of the dull, mad murderer of the police-courts. With a sudden animation she thought:
"Suppose he tried to murder Christopher. . . . " And she imagined her husband breaking the fellow's back across his knee, the idea going across her mind as fire traverses the opal. Then, with a dry throat, she said to herself:
