olitary life also of a woman who is--I may say it
now--dear to me." He spoke with deliberate gravity. Mrs. Romaine's
pulses beat faster: the hot color began to steal into her cheeks. "I
never wished to inflict pain upon her. I have always regretted the years
of separation and loneliness that we have both spent. So I have
resolved--perhaps that is too strong a word--I am thinking of asking her
to share my home with me again."

"Again?" The word escaped Rosalind's lips before she knew that she had
spoken.

"Yes, once again," said Caspar, quite unconscious of her emotion. "We
did not get on very well when we lived together, but we are older now,
and I think that if we made a fresh start it _might_ be possible--I
wonder if Alice would consent?"

There was a moment's pause. Then--"You think of asking Lady Alice to
come back to you?" said Mrs. Romaine, in a hard, measured voice, which
made Caspar look at her with some transient feeling of surprise. But he
put down the change of tone to her astonishment at his proposition, and
went on unmoved.

"I thought of it--yes. It would be much better for Lesley."

"Are you so devoted to Lesley that you want to sacrifice your whole life
for her?" asked Rosalind, in the same hard, strained voice.

"My whole life? Well, no--but you exaggerate, Rosalind. I do not
sacrifice my whole life by having my wife and daughter in my house."

"That is plausibly said. But one has to consider what sort of wife and
daughter yours are, and what part of your life will have to be devoted
to them."

Brooke sat and stroked his beard. He began to wish that he had not
mentioned his project to Mrs. Romaine. But he could not easily tell her
to hold her tongue.

"I am not going to presume," said Rosalind, "to say anything
unkind--anything harsh of your wife: I know I have not the right, and I
know that you would--very properly--resent it. So don't be afraid. But I
only want to remind you that Lady Alice is not even where she was when,
as an over-sensitive, easily-offended girl, she fled from you. She has
had twelve years of life under conditions differing most entirely from
yours. She has lived in the fashionable world--a world which of all
others you dislike. What sympathy can there be between you? She may be
perfect in her own line, but it is not your line: you are different; and
you will never be happy together."

"That is a hard thing to say, Rosalind."

"It will be a harder thing for you if you