sible that he had acted badly, had been blatant. But anyhow Lady
Sellingworth had been very unkind. She ought to have told him that she
was going abroad, to have let him see her before she went.

He felt that this short episode in his life was quite over. It had ended
abruptly, undramatically. It had seemed to mean a good deal, and it had
really meant nothing. What a boy he had been through it all! His cheeks
burned at the thought. And he had prided himself on being a thorough
man of the world. Evidently, despite his knowledge of life, his Foreign
Office training, his experience of war--he had been a soldier for two
years--he was really something of a simpleton. He had "given himself
away" in Braybrooke, and probably to others as well, to Lady Wrackley,
Mrs. Ackroyde, and perhaps even to Miss Van Tuyn. And to Lady
Sellingworth!

What had she thought of him? What did she think of him? Nothing perhaps.
She had belonged to the "old guard." Many men had passed through her
hands. He felt at that moment acute hostility to women. They were
treacherous, unreliable, even the best of them. They had not the
continuity which belonged to men. Even elderly women--he was thinking of
women of the world--even they were not to be trusted. Life was warfare
even when war was over. One had to fight always against the instability
of those around you. And yet there was planted in a man--at any rate
there was planted in him--a deep longing for stability, a need to
trust, a desire to attach himself to someone with whom he could be quite
unreserved, to whom he could "open out" without fear of criticism or of
misunderstand.

He had believed that in Lady Sellingworth he had found such an one,
and now he had been shown his mistake. He reached the house in which he
lived, but although he had walked to it with the intention of going in
he paused on the threshold, then turned away and went on towards Hyde
Park. Night was falling; the damp softness of late autumn companioned
him wistfully. The streets were not very full. London seemed unusually
quiet that evening. But when he reached the Marble Arch he saw people
streaming hither and thither, hurrying towards Oxford Street, pouring
into the Edgware Road, climbing upon omnibuses which were bound for
Notting Hill, Ealing and Acton, drifting towards the wide and gloomy
spaces of the Park. He crossed the great roadway and went into the Park,
too. Attracted by a small gathering of dark figures he joined t