Poor child! She could not jilt him; there was something vulgar in the
word! Never should it be said that Antonia Dennant had accented him and
thrown him over. No lady did these things! They were impossible! At
the bottom of his heart he had a queer, unconscious sympathy with, this
impossibility.

Once again he read the letter, which seemed now impregnated with fresh
meaning, and the anger which had mingled with his first sensation of
relief detached itself and grew in force. In that letter there was
something tyrannous, a denial of his right to have a separate point
of view. It was like a finger pointed at him as an unsound person.
In marrying her he would be marrying not only her, but her class--his
class. She would be there always to make him look on her and on
himself, and all the people that they knew and all the things they did,
complacently; she would be there to make him feel himself superior to
everyone whose life was cast in other moral moulds. To feel himself
superior, not blatantly, not consciously, but with subconscious
righteousness.

But his anger, which was like the paroxysm that two days before had made
him mutter at the Connoisseur, "I hate your d---d superiority," struck
him all at once as impotent and ludicrous. What was the good of being
angry? He was on the point of losing her! And the anguish of that
thought, reacting on his anger, intensified it threefold. She was
so certain of herself, so superior to her emotions, to her natural
impulses--superior to her very longing to be free from him. Of that
fact, at all events, Shelton had no longer any doubt. It was beyond
argument. She did not really love him; she wanted to be free of him!

A photograph hung in his bedroom at Holm Oaks of a group round the hall
door; the Honourable Charlotte Penguin, Mrs. Dennant, Lady Bonington,
Halidome, Mr. Dennant, and the stained-glass man--all were there; and on
the left-hand side, looking straight in front of her, Antonia. Her face
in its youthfulness, more than all those others, expressed their
point of view: Behind those calm young eyes lay a world of safety and
tradition. "I am not as others are," they seemed to say.

And from that photograph Mr. and Mrs. Dennant singled themselves out;
he could see their faces as they talked--their faces with a peculiar and
uneasy look on them; and he could hear their voices, still decisive, but
a little acid, as if they had been quarrelling:

"He 's made a donkey of hims