understand
it, as she chose to keep him entirely in the dark, he would be passive.
It was not his business to run after Beryl Van Tuyn, to interfere almost
forcibly between her and another man, even if that man were a scoundrel.
Miss Van Tuyn was a free agent. She had the right to choose her own
friends, her own lovers. Once he had decided that he would not give up
his intimacy with her in favour of another man without a struggle, the
sort of polite, and perhaps subtle, struggle which is suitable to the
twentieth century, when man must only be barbarous in battle. But since
the encounter in Glebe Place he had changed his mind. Disgust had
seized him that day. What could he think but that Beryl Van Tuyn had
deliberately induced him to come to Glebe Place, in order that he might
see not only her absolute indifference to him but also her intimacy
with Arabian? Her reason for such a crude exposure of her lightness of
conduct escaped Craven. He could not conceive what she was up to, unless
her design was to arouse in him violent jealousy. He did feel jealous,
but he was certainly not going to show it. Besides, the delicacy
that was natural in him was disquieted by what he thought of as the
coarseness of her behaviour.

As once more he looked at Lady Sellingworth's letter he was struck by
something final in the wording of it. There was nothing explicit in it.
On the contrary, that seemed to be carefully avoided. But the allusions
to old age, to disturbing influences, the decision not to go again to
the _Bella Napoli_--these seemed to hint an intention to return to a
former state of being, to abandon a new path of life. And he remembered
a conversation with Francis Braybrooke at the club, the interest it had
roused in him. Some slumbering feeling for romance had been stirred in
him, he now thought, by that conversation, by the information he had
received about the distinguished recluse who had lived a great life and
then suddenly plunged into old age and complete retirement.

Now he seemed to hear a door shutting, and he was outside it. She had
allowed him to enter her life for a short time, to enter it almost
intimately. But she was surely repenting of that intimacy. He did not
know why. Did he ever know why a woman did this or that? There was no
suggestion in the letter that he should ever call again, no hint of a
desire to see him. She was only sorry, politely sorry, that she had
not been able to see him that day. But no