had a rare political adroitness, but it had little intellectual subtlety.  It had had no preparation for the situation now upon him, and its accustomed capacity was suddenly paralyzed.  Like some huge ship staggered by the sea, it took its punishment with heavy, sullen endurance.  Socially he had never, as it were, seen through a ladder; and Jasmine’s almost uncanny brilliance of repartee and skill in the delicate contest of the mind had ever been a wonder to him, though less so of late than earlier in their married life.  Perhaps this was because his senses were more used to it, more blunted; or was it because something had gone from her—­that freshness of mind and body, that resilience of temper and spirit, without which all talk is travail and weariness?  He had never thought it out, though he was dimly conscious of some great loss—­of the light gone from the evening sky.

Yes, it was always in the evening that he had most longed to see “his girl”; when the day’s work was done; when the political and financial stress had subsided; or when he had abstracted himself from it all and turned his face towards home.  For the big place in Park Lane had really been home to him, chiefly because, or alone because, Jasmine had made it what it was; because in every room, in every corner, was the product of her taste and design.  It had been home because it was associated with her.  But of late ever since his five months’ visit to South Africa without her the year before—­there had come a change, at first almost imperceptible, then broadening and deepening.

At first it had vexed and surprised him; but at length it had become a feeling natural to, and in keeping with, a scheme of life in which they saw little of each other, because they saw so much of other people.  His primitive soul had rebelled against it at first, not bitterly, but confusedly; because he knew that he did not know why it was; and he thought that if he had patience he would come to understand it in time.  But the understanding did not come, and on that ominous, prophetic day before they went to Glencader, the day when Ian Stafford had dined with Jasmine alone after their meeting in Regent Street, there had been a wild, aching protest against it all.  Not against Jasmine—­he did not blame her; he only realized that she was different from what he had thought she was; that they were both different from what they had been; and that—­the light had gone from the evening sky.

But from first to last he had always trusted her.  It had never crossed his mind, when she “made up” to men in her brilliant, provoking, intoxicating way, that there was any lack of loyalty to him.  It simply never crossed his mind.  She was his wife, his girl, his flower which he had plucked; and there it was, for the universe to see, for the universe to heed as a matter of course.  For himself, since he had married her, he had never thought of another woman for an instant, except either to admire or to criticize her; and his criticism was, as Jasmine had said, “infantile.”  The sum of it was, he was married to the woman of his choice, she was married to the man of her choice; and there it was, there it was, a great, eternal, settled fact.  It was not a thing for speculation or doubt or reconsideration.