Day after day, and night after night; it was evident that at this

rate she and Tyson were bound to see each other some time, somewhere.

Stanistreet wondered whether that thought had ever occurred to her. And

if they met--well, he could not tell whether he desired or feared to see

that meeting. In all probability it would put an end to doubt. Was it

possible that he had begun to love doubt for its own sake?

At last they met, as was to be expected, and Stanistreet was there to

see. He had taken her to the "Criterion" one night, and at the close of

the first act Tyson came into the box opposite theirs. He was alone. The

lights went up in the house, and he looked round before he sat down;

evidently he had recognized his wife, and evidently she knew it.

Stanistreet, watching her with painful interest, saw her body slacken

and her face turn white under its paint and powder.

"Either she cares for the beggar still, or else--she's afraid for her

life of him."

A horrible thought flashed across him. What if all the time she had

simply been making use of him as--as a damned stalking-horse for Tyson?

It might account for the enigmatic smiles, the swift transitions, the

whole maddening mystery of her ways. If he had been nothing to her but

the man who knew more about Tyson than anybody else? She had always had a

way of making him talk about Tyson, while he seemed to himself to be most

engagingly egotistic.

And he had once thought that Mrs. Nevill Tyson adored her husband for his

(Stanistreet's) benefit. There was this summer, and that moment in the

library at Thorneytoft--Mrs. Nevill Tyson was beyond him. And he had been

three years trying to understand her. He was a man of the world, and he

ought to have understood.

Ah--perhaps that was the reason of his failure!

He looked at her again. She had shifted her position, turned her back on

the stage; her eyes were lowered, fixed on the programme in her lap, but

they were motionless; she was not reading. One ungloved arm hung by her

side, and under the white skin he could see the pulses leaping and

throbbing in the arteries, the delicate tissues of her bodice trembled

and shook. Was it possible that in that frivolous little body, under

that corsage of lace and satin and whalebone, there beat one of those

rare and tragic passions, all-consuming, all-absorbing, blind and deaf

to everything but itself? In that case--well, he felt something very

like awe before what he called her miraculous stupidity. But no, it was

impossible; to believe it was to believe in miracles, and he had long ago

lost his faith in the supernatural. Women did not love like that

nowadays.




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