ht retrospect, of
having failed to press home his conclusion because he dared not face
the truth. But he knew this was not the case. It was not the truth he
feared, it was another lie. If he had foreseen a chance of her saying:
"Yes, I was with Peter Van Degen, and for the reason you think," he
would have put it to the touch, stood up to the blow like a man; but he
knew she would never say that. She would go on eluding and doubling,
watching him as he watched her; and at that game she was sure to beat
him in the end.

On their way home from the Elling dinner this certainty had become so
insufferable that it nearly escaped him in the cry: "You needn't watch
me--I shall never again watch you!" But he had held his peace, knowing
she would not understand. How little, indeed, she ever understood,
had been made clear to him when, the same night, he had followed her
upstairs through the sleeping house. She had gone on ahead while he
stayed below to lock doors and put out lights, and he had supposed her
to be already in her room when he reached the upper landing; but she
stood there waiting in the spot where he had waited for her a few hours
earlier. She had shone her vividest at dinner, with revolving brilliancy
that collective approval always struck from her; and the glow of it
still hung on her as she paused there in the dimness, her shining cloak
dropped from her white shoulders.

"Ralphie--" she began, a soft hand on his arm. He stopped, and she
pulled him about so that their faces were close, and he saw her lips
curving for a kiss. Every line of her face sought him, from the sweep of
the narrowed eyelids to the dimples that played away from her smile. His
eye received the picture with distinctness; but for the first time it
did not pass into his veins. It was as if he had been struck with a
subtle blindness that permitted images to give their colour to the eye
but communicated nothing to the brain.

"Good-night," he said, as he passed on.

When a man felt in that way about a woman he was surely in a position to
deal with his case impartially. This came to Ralph as the joyless solace
of the morning. At last the bandage was off and he could see. And what
did he see? Only the uselessness of driving his wife to subterfuges that
were no longer necessary. Was Van Degen her lover? Probably not--the
suspicion died as it rose. She would not take more risks than she could
help, and it was admiration, not love, that she wanted.