"Oh, it's so hard to explain!" Helen said, her eyes brimming with tears. "I was so young when I married trim, and I thought everything was going to be like my dreams. I'm not excusing myself: I know John's a fine man, but he didn't understand me, and he didn't want what I wanted - life, gaiety and excitement!"

"Didn't you love him?" asked Sally bluntly.

"I thought I did. Only everything went wrong. If only ,John had been different - but you know what he's like! If he'd shaken me, or even beaten me, I'd have pulled myself up. But he didn't. He simply retired into his shell. He was busy, too, and I was bored. I started going about without him. Sally, I tell you I don't know how it began, or how we got to this pitch, but we're utterly, utterly estranged!" The tears were running down her cheeks. She said with a catch in her voice: "I'd give anything to have it all back again, but I can't, and there's a gulf between us which I can't bridge! Now this has happened, and I suppose that'll end it. I shall have dragged John's name in the mud, and the least I can do is to let him divorce me."

"Don't be such an ass!" said Sally bracingly. John's much too decent to let you down when you're in trouble. You don't divorce people for getting into debt, and if your IOUs are found in Ernie Fletcher's possession it'll be obvious that you weren't a faithless wife."

"If they're found, and it all comes out, I'll kill myself!"

Helen said. "I couldn't face it. I could not face it! John doesn't know a thing about my gambling. It's the one thing that he detests above all others. Neville's a beast, but he's perfectly right when he says it's a sordid story. It wasn't Bridge, or the sort of gambling you have at parties, but a - a real hell!"

"Lummy!" said Miss Drew elegantly. "Gilded vice, and haggard harpies, and suicides adjacent? All that sort of thing?"

"It wasn't gilded, and I don't know about any suicides, but it was a bad place, and yet - in a way - rather thrilling. If John knew of it - the people who belonged to it - Sally, no one would believe I wasn't a bad woman if it was known I went to that place!"