No details, please." The great shadowy form seemed to shrink away as if in physical dread of details; then came forward, expanded, enormous, and weighty, offering a large hand.

"And you say that this man has got a wife ?" "Yes, Sir Ethelred," said the Assistant Commissioner, pressing deferentially the extended hand.

"A genuine wife and a genuinely, respectably, marital relation.

He told me that after his interview at the Embassy he would have thrown everything up, would have tried to sell his shop, and leave the country, only he felt certain that his wife would not even hear of going abroad.

Nothing could be more characteristic of the respectable bond than that," went on, with a touch of grimness, the Assistant Commissioner, whose own wife too had refused to hear of going abroad.