He had been a year in prison.  He drove away from the jail in a cab with Doctor Waram, and when the crowd saw that he was wearing the old symbol—­a yellow chrysanthemum—­a hiss went up that was like a geyser of contempt and ridicule.  Grimshaw’s pallid face flushed.  But he lifted his hat and smiled into the host of faces as the cab jerked forward.

He went at once to Broadenham.  Years later, Waram told me about the meeting between those two—­the centaur and the milk-white doe!  Dagmar received him standing and she remained standing all during the interview.  She had put aside her mourning for a dress made of some clear blue stuff, and Waram said that as she stood in the breakfast room, with a sun-flooded window behind her, she was very lovely indeed.

Grimshaw held out his hands, but she ignored them.  Then Grimshaw smiled and shrugged his shoulders and said:  “I have made two discoveries this past year:  That conventionalized religion is the most shocking evil of our day, and that you, my wife, are in love with Doctor Waram.”

Dagmar held her ground.  There was in her eyes a look of inevitable security.  She was mistress of the house, proprietor of the land, conscious of tradition, prerogative, position.  The man she faced had nothing except his tortured imagination.  For the first time in her life she was in a position to hurt him.  So she looked away from him to Waram and confirmed his discovery with a smile full of pride and happiness.

“My dear fellow,” Grimshaw shouted, clapping Waram on the back, “I’m confoundedly pleased!  We’ll arrange a divorce for Dagmar.  Good heaven, she deserves a decent future.  I’m not the sort for her.  I hate the things she cares most about.  And now I’m done for in England.  Just to make it look conventional—­nice, Victorian, English, you understand—­you and I can go off to the Continent together while Dagmar’s getting rid of me.  There’ll be no trouble about that.  I’m properly dished.  Besides, I want freedom.  A new life.  Beauty, without having to buck this confounded distrust of beauty.  Sensation, without being ashamed of sensation.  I want to drop out of sight.  Reform?  No!  I am being honest.”

So they went off together, as friendly as you please, to France.  Waram was still thinking of Dagmar; Grimshaw was thinking only of himself.  He swaggered up and down the Paris boulevards showing his tombstone teeth and staring at the women.  “The Europeans admire me,” he said to Waram.  “May England go to the devil.”  He groaned.  “I despise respectability, my dear Waram.  You and Dagmar are well rid of me.  I see I’m offending you here in Paris—­you look nauseated most of the time.  Let’s go on to Switzerland and climb mountains.”

Waram was nauseated.  They went to Salvan and there a curious thing happened.

They were walking one afternoon along the road to Martigny.  The valley was full of shadows like a deep green cup of purple wine.  High above them the mountains were tipped with flame.  Grimshaw walked slowly—­he was a man of great physical laziness—­slashing his cane at the tasselled tips of the crowding larches.  Once, when a herd of little goats trotted by, he stood aside and laughed uproariously, and the goatherd’s dog, bristling, snapped in passing at his legs.