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idea of its failure under trial had never reached her.

She recalled painfully the story of the last two years. Her husband was nearly fifteen years older than herself when he had asked her to be his wife. His talent, his acknowledged position, had lent almost the character of condescension to the act. Not on his side; he was the most humble-minded of men—but she had already idealized him through his writings. Yet he had told her that she was absolutely needful to him, that she ran through his conceptions as the model for all fairness. It had seemed to her as the voice of a god.

Latterly, he had ceased to say these things.

She had pictured a life of intellectual excitement and constant variety when she exchanged the old Garden House in Cambridge, where she had lived with her aunt, Miss Poyntz, for the home of a man holding the literary and artistic position in the London world, of Tom Vane. Instead, she had been excessively dull. Her husband was much from home; he was the proprietor and editor of the London Month—and he was collecting material for a new work. He liked the house twenty miles out of town for the sake of change and refreshment; she hated it. The deadness of the suburban village had much to answer for; she grew morose and depressed, brooding in her solitude over her wrongs.

She told herself finally that her marriage had been a mistake; that she was no more to her husband than a source of occasional relaxation—and that she was deteriorating. The views imbibed from girl friends, chiefly graduates, lacking at any rate in personal experience, revived. The development of woman was checked, and aspiration stifled, by the merging of her identity in the will of a man to whom she was a mere toy.

Theories of this kind, somewhat superficially grafted on to a nature that craved incessantly, not only for affection, but for its expression, bade fair to work complications in the fate of Mrs. Vane. She was utterly unable to conceal even momentary feeling, and she let her husband see plainly the effects of the phase through which she was passing, without attempting any explanation.

So far, her idea of change in him was purely imaginary; he was placid and restful by nature. She still ran, like the finest thread, through the whole woof and web of his life; but as daily widening interests claimed him, he did not forecast that she would need daily assurance of the fact. He felt the change in her, and feared with a dumb, aching pain that she was disappointed; that she regretted having married a man so much her senior, imagining that she was tired of his affection, rather than that she needed more of it. The thought was present with him in the pauses of his work; in his journeys to and from town; he grew more reserved, and less hopeful, losing buoyancy daily.

In this way the breach widened, and a crash became inevitable.

One night he returned, after nearly a week's absence, only to tell her that he was starting for Edinburgh two days later. Her sense of injury culminated, and she, at last, gave it vent in no very measured terms. She said many things bitter for Tom Vane to hear and to remember. She told him that she had married him under a girlish illusion, before she knew what life meant; she also spoke of her aspirations, and of her individual development. Finally, she begged for freedom, that she might live her life, that she might realize—herself. How far she understood her own meaning was doubtful. He heard her patiently to the end. She saw that he was deeply moved, whether with pain or anger she could not tell.

"You must be mad," he said, when she paused; "but it shall be as you wish. Certainly, I will not detain you against your will." Then he had left her abruptly; the blow had fallen upon him when he was wearied both physically and mentally.

Later he had come back, and put before her, as a brother or a friend might have done, the irretrievable consequences of her act, but he had not sought to influence or persuade her. His calmness exasperated her; and although growing rather frightened at the definiteness which her desire had taken, she would not draw back.

Finally he had ceased all argument; he had entered, still with the same quietude, upon the easiest method of carrying out her wish. He had suggested that at first, at any rate, she should return to her aunt's house at Cambridge. She could go as if on a visit while he was in the North, future arrangements could follow, but he would lose no time in securing her comfort and freedom, as far as possible.

She ventured no further opposition. The next day he went to town as usual—he was to remain that night in London, starting on the following afternoon for the North. Their farewell was quite unemotional; he had the