The relationship sank into hatred. His wife was "scum of the lowest kind" MacLeod told his family back in Holland, "a woman without heart, who cares nothing for anything". On that he was wrong - she cared for officers. He caught her with a second lieutenant. She flaunted herself in a low-cut dress at a ball. She was punishing him by stoking up his jealousy. He punished her in return with a cat-o'-nine-tails. She wrote to her father: "I cannot live with a man who is so despicable. I eat and live apart and I prefer to die before he touches me again. My children caught a disease from him." MacLeod left the army and the family returned to Holland. There they separated. But MacLeod had one more weapon to use against her. He put an advertisement in the local papers warning shops not to give her credit because he had resigned all responsibility for her. It left her penniless. She had to earn money - and there was only one way she knew how. Sexual favours were her only useful assets, but she did not see Holland as the best place to exploit them. In 1903, with little money and no contacts, she took herself off to Paris.