Once back again in the sun-warmed quietness of Chequers Street, Wolf, after walking a step or two, paused to take counsel with himself.

“She’ll be back for tea,” he thought, “and then I’ll talk to her. I’ll make her take this affair lightly. But no more of Weevil. She must be quit of Weevil. Cuckold I am. Wittold I refuse to be!”

He drew pensive patterns on the sunlit pavement with the end of his stick. All manner of contradictory projects floated through his brain as to how to spend the long, tantalizing hours between this and five o’clock. Of these notions one lodged itself finally in his mind as the very thing indicated by the occasion. He would consult the most cynical of all his oracles! How many months was it since he had last been over there⁠ ⁠… since he had gazed straight down through the clay to where the skull grinned back at him? Too long⁠ ⁠… too long! Yes, that is what he would do. He would visit “old Truepenny.” Nothing would make the hours pass quicker than that!