ne,
to whom he had given all, for whom he had been ready to give up
all--career, fame, existence--was true to none, unfaithful to all,
caring for none, but pretending to care for all three--and for how many
others? He choked back a cry.

"Well--well?" came the husband's voice across the table. "There's one
thing to do, and I mean to do it." He waved a hand towards the
music-room. "He's in the next room there. I mean to kill him--to kill
him--now. I wanted you to know why, to know all, you, Stafford, my old
friend and hers. And I'm going to do it now. Listen to him there!"

His words came brokenly and scarce above a whisper, but they were
ghastly in their determination, in their loathing, their blind fury. He
was gone mad, all the animal in him alive, the brain tossing on a sea
of disorder.

"Now!" he said, suddenly, and, rising, he pushed back his chair. "Give
that to me."

He reached out his hand for the letter, but his confused senses were
suddenly arrested by the look in Ian Stafford's face, a look so
strange, so poignant, so insistent, that he paused. Words could not
have checked his blind haste like that look. In the interval which
followed, the music from the other room struck upon the ears of both,
with exasperating insistence:

"Not like the roses shall our love be, dear--"

Stafford made no motion to return the letter. He caught and held
Rudyard's eyes.

"You ask me to tell you what I think of the man who wrote this letter,"
he said, thickly and slowly, for he was like one paralyzed, regaining
his speech with blanching effort: "Byng, I think what you think--all
you think; but I would not do what you want to do."

As he had read the letter the whole horror of the situation burst upon
him. Jasmine had deceived her husband when she turned to himself, and
that was to be understood--to be understood, if not to be pardoned. A
woman might marry, thinking she cared, and all too soon, sometimes
before the second day had dawned, learn that shrinking and repugnance
which not even habit can modify or obscure. A girl might be mistaken,
with her heart and nature undeveloped, and with that closer intimate
life with another of another sex still untried. With the transition
from maidenhood to wifehood, fateful beyond all transitions, yet
unmade, she might be mistaken once; as so many have been in the
revelations of first intimacy; but not twice, not the second time. It
was not possible to be mistaken in so vital a th