That night Selwyn wrote briefly to Mrs. Ruthven: 

“I saw your husband this afternoon.  He is at liberty to inform you of what passed.  But in case he does not, there is one detail which you ought to know:  your husband believes that you once paid a visit to my apartments.  It is unlikely that he will repeat the accusation and I think there is no occasion for you to worry.  However, it is only proper that you should know this—­which is my only excuse for writing you a letter that requires no acknowledgment.  Very truly yours,

     “PHILIP SELWYN.”

To this letter she wrote an excited and somewhat incoherent reply; and rereading it in troubled surprise, he began to recognise in it something of the strange, illogical, impulsive attitude which had confronted him in the first weeks of his wedded life.

Here was the same minor undertone of unrest sounding ominously through every line; the same illogical, unhappy attitude which implied so much and said so little, leaving him uneasy and disconcerted, conscious of the vague recklessness and veiled reproach—­dragging him back from the present through the dead years to confront once more the old pain, the old bewilderment at the hopeless misunderstanding between them.

He wrote in answer: 

“For the first time in my life I am going to write you some unpleasant truths.  I cannot comprehend what you have written; I cannot interpret what you evidently imagine I must divine in these pages—­yet, as I read, striving to understand, all the old familiar pain returns—­the hopeless attempt to realise wherein I failed in what you expected of me.

“But how can I, now, be held responsible for your unhappiness and unrest—­for the malicious attitude, as you call it, of the world toward you?  Years ago you felt that there existed some occult coalition against you, and that I was either privy to it or indifferent.  I was not indifferent, but I did not believe there existed any reason for your suspicions.  This was the beginning of my failure to understand you; I was sensible enough that we were unhappy, yet could not see any reason for it—­could see no reason for the increasing restlessness and discontent which came over you like successive waves following some brief happy interval when your gaiety and beauty and wit fairly dazzled me and everybody who came near you.  And then, always hateful and irresistible, followed the days of depression, of incomprehensible impulses, of that strange unreasoning resentment toward me.

“What could I do?  I don’t for a moment say that there was nothing I might have done.  Certainly there must have been something; but I did not know what.  And often in my confusion and bewilderment I was quick-tempered, impatient to the point of exasperation—­so utterly unable was I to understand wherein I was failing to make you contented.

“Of course I could not shirk