ntempt for
one woman had not driven him, as it so often does, to other women--to
that wild waste which leaves behind it a barren and ill-natured soil
exhausted of its power, of its generous and native health. There was a
strange apathy in his senses, an emotional stillness, as it were, the
atrophy of all the passionate elements of his nature. But because of
this he was the better poised, the more evenly balanced, the more
perceptive. His eyes were not blurred or dimmed by any stress of
emotion, his mind worked in a cool quiet, and his forward tread had
leisurely decision and grace. He had sunk one part of himself far below
the level of activity or sensation, while new resolves, new powers of
mind, new designs were set in motion to make his career a real and
striking success. He had the most friendly ear and the full confidence
of the Prime Minister, who was also Foreign Secretary--he had got that
far; and now, if one of his great international schemes could but be
completed, an ambassadorship would be his reward, and one of
first-class importance. The three years had done much for him in a
worldly way, wonderfully much.

As he looked at the woman who had shaken his life to the centre--not by
her rejection of him, but by the fashion of it, the utter selfishness
and cold-blooded calculation of it, he knew that love's fires were out,
and that he could meet her without the agitation of a single nerve. He
despised her, but he could make allowance for her. He knew the strain
that was in her, got from her brilliant and rather plangent
grandfather. He knew the temptation of a vast fortune, the power that
it would bring--and the notoriety, too, again an inheritance from her
grandfather. He was not without magnanimity, and he could the more
easily exercise it because his pulses of emotion were still.

She was by nature the most brilliantly endowed woman he had ever met,
the most naturally perceptive and artistic, albeit there was a touch of
gorgeousness to the inherent artistry which time, training and
experience would have chastened. Would have chastened? Was it not,
then, chastened? Looking at her now, he knew that it was not. It was
still there, he felt; but how much else was also there--of charm, of
elusiveness, of wit, of mental adroitness, of joyous eagerness to
discover a new thought or a new thing! She was a creature of rare
splendour, variety and vanity.

Why should he deny himself the pleasure of her society? His
in