HIS SECRET SIN 
 
Inscribed admiringly to Alexander Coote. 
 
THEODORE BUGG had made England what she is. The 
last forty-two years had elevated him from errand-boy to 
biggest retail grocer in the Midlands. Twenty-eight years 
of wedded happiness had left him with a clear con-
science, a five-year old grave to keep in order “To the 
memory of my beloved relict,” as he had written until 
the clerk suggested a trifling alteration, and a strapping 
daughter just turned twenty.  
I wish I could stop here. But there is a rough side to 
every canvas, and Theodore Bugg had forgotten all 
about England, and what she is, and how he had made 
her. Or if the good work was going on, it was subcon-
scious. He was standing by the gilded statue of Jeanne 
d'Arc, his mouth wide open, his Baedeker limp in his 
perspiring hand. “She's riding astride!” The molten mad-
ness throbbed in his brain. “She's got man's clothes on!”  
The shocking truth must out: Theodore Bugg had 
come to Paris for Pleasure!  
He had only been able to spare two days, the Sun-
day and Monday of Whitsuntide. He had travelled by the 
night boat on Saturday, arriving in Paris on Sunday 
morning—the first step downward! The air of Paris in-
toxicated him; the Grands Boulevards ate into his moral 
fibre like a dragon chewing butter; and though he had 
not actually ‘been in’ anywhere, he felt the atmosphere 
of the music-halls as Ulysses heard the Sirens. He was 
fortunately tied to the mast of his ignorance of French 
and his fear of asking anybody such a very peculiar 
question, or he would certainly have discovered and vis-
ited the Moulin Rouge.  
As it was, Joan of Arc was very much more than was 
good for him. He stared, fascinated as by a basilisk, his 
eyes starting further and further from his head as his 
moral sense dragged his body backwards along the Rue