heavily, like one drugged, Rudyard Byng made his way through
the streets, oblivious of all around him. His brain was like some
engine pounding at high pressure, while all his body was cold and
lethargic. His anger at those he left behind was almost madness, his
humiliation was unlike anything he had ever known. In one sense he was
not a man of the world. All his thoughts and moods and habits had been
essentially primitive, even in the high social and civilized
surroundings of his youth; and when he went to South Africa, it was to
come into his own--the large, simple, rough, adventurous life. His
powerful and determined mind was confined in its scope to the big
essential things. It had a rare political adroitness, but it had little
intellectual subtlety. It had had no preparation for the situation now
upon him, and its accustomed capacity was suddenly paralyzed. Like some
huge ship staggered by the sea, it took its punishment with heavy,
sullen endurance. Socially he had never, as it were, seen through a
ladder; and Jasmine's almost uncanny brilliance of repartee and skill
in the delicate contest of the mind had ever been a wonder to him,
though less so of late than earlier in their married life. Perhaps this
was because his senses were more used to it, more blunted; or was it
because something had gone from her--that freshness of mind and body,
that resilience of temper and spirit, without which all talk is travail
and weariness? He had never thought it out, though he was dimly
conscious of some great loss--of the light gone from the evening sky.

Yes, it was always in the evening that he had most longed to see "his
girl"; when the day's work was done; when the political and financial
stress had subsided; or when he had abstracted himself from it all and
turned his face towards home. For the big place in Park Lane had really
been home to him, chiefly because, or alone because, Jasmine had made
it what it was; because in every room, in every corner, was the product
of her taste and design. It had been home because it was associated
with her. But of late ever since his five months' visit to South Africa
without her the year before--there had come a change, at first almost
imperceptible, then broadening and deepening.

At first it had vexed and surprised him; but at length it had become a
feeling natural to, and in keeping with, a scheme of life in which they
saw little of each other, because they saw so much of other peop