Next morning, as was my custom on such occasions, on arriving back in Farnborough I went straight from the station to my office. At the midday break I went home for lunch. As I greeted Dinah I expected her to ask me how I had enjoyed my dinner in London. Instead, looking more radiant than I had seen her for a long time, she threw her arms round my neck and cried:

'Darling, you ought to go to those dinners of yours more often if you always come home after them. I don't think we've had such a wonderful night since our honeymoon.'

As she was holding me to her I was able to conceal my astonishment. Then, over her shoulder, I distinctly saw Lothar's face, and it was sneering at me. Instantly the explanation of what Dinah had said became clear. Lothar had impersonated me and slept with her the previous night.

My distress and fury can be imagined; but realizing the shattering effect the truth would have on her, I felt that I must prevent her from getting the least suspicion that anything was wrong. Controlling my emotions with an effort, I told her how much I loved her and what a joy she was to me. Later, I found my night-bag in a cupboard in the hall. That was concrete evidence that Dinah had not dreamt my return, and I had no doubt that Lothar had gone to some trouble to collect it, so that he might use it as a sort of sign-manual that he really had been there and taken my place as Dinah's husband in our bed.

One would have thought such an act, causing me the sick misery that it did, would have been enough to satisfy his resentment at my refusal to fall in with his plans; but it was not.

Three weeks elapsed, during which I gradually became less troubled by thoughts of him and the criminal deception he had practised on Dinah; then one morning I received a solicitor's letter. It informed me that I was to be cited as co-respondent in an action for divorce.

Knowing myself to be guiltless, I went up to London and demanded from the solicitors an explanation of the unjustified charge that had been brought against me. They gave it to me, chapter and verse.