staring in front of her.

"Good-night," I said, making no movement towards our habitual kiss.

"Good-night," she answered in a tragic note....

I closed the door softly. I remained for a moment or so on the big
landing, hesitating between my bedroom and my study. As I did so I heard
the soft rustle of her movement and the click of the key in her bedroom
door. Then everything was still....

She hid her tears from me. Something gripped my heart at the thought.

"Damnation!" I said wincing. "Why the devil can't people at least THINK
in the same manner?"

2

And that insufficient colloquy was the beginning of a prolonged
estrangement between us. It was characteristic of our relations that we
never reopened the discussion. The thing had been in the air for some
time; we had recognised it now; the widening breach between us was
confessed. My own feelings were curiously divided. It is remarkable that
my very real affection for Margaret only became evident to me with this
quarrel. The changes of the heart are very subtle changes. I am quite
unaware how or when my early romantic love for her purity and beauty
and high-principled devotion evaporated from my life; but I do know that
quite early in my parliamentary days there had come a vague, unconfessed
resentment at the tie that seemed to hold me in servitude to her
standards of private living and public act. I felt I was caught, and
none the less so because it had been my own act to rivet on my shackles.
So long as I still held myself bound to her that resentment grew. Now,
since I had broken my bonds and taken my line it withered again, and I
could think of Margaret with a returning kindliness.

But I still felt embarrassment with her. I felt myself dependent upon
her for house room and food and social support, as it were under false
pretences. I would have liked to have separated our financial affairs
altogether. But I knew that to raise the issue would have seemed a
last brutal indelicacy. So I tried almost furtively to keep my personal
expenditure within the scope of the private income I made by writing,
and we went out together in her motor brougham, dined and made
appearances, met politely at breakfast--parted at night with a kiss upon
her cheek. The locking of her door upon me, which at that time I quite
understood, which I understand now, became for a time in my mind,
through some obscure process of the soul, an offence. I never crossed
the landing to he