servation. Monica often puzzled him gravely; he could not find the
key to her satisfactions and discontents. To regard her simply as a
human being was beyond the reach of his intelligence. He cast the blame
of his difficulties upon sex, and paid more attention to the hints on
such afforded him by his reading. He would endeavour to keep his
jealousy out of sight, lest the mysterious tendency of the female
nature might prompt Monica to deliberate wrongdoing.

To-day for the first time there flashed across him the thought that
already he might have been deceived. It originated in a peculiarity of
Monica's behaviour at luncheon. She ate scarcely anything; she seemed
hurried, frequently glancing at the clock; and she lost herself in
reverie. Discovering that his eye was upon her, she betrayed
uneasiness, and began to talk without considering what she meant to
say. All this might mean nothing more than her barely-concealed regret
at being obliged to leave London; but Widdowson remarked it with a
vivacity of feeling perhaps due to the excitement in which he had lived
for the past week. Perhaps the activity, the resolution to which he had
urged himself, caused a sharpening of his perceptions. And the very
thought, never out of his mind, that only a few days had to elapse
before he carried off his wife from the scene of peril, tended to make
him more vividly conscious of that peril. Certain it was that a
moment's clairvoyance assailed his peace, and left behind it all manner
of ugly conjectures. Woman--so said the books--are adepts at
dissimulation. Was it conceivable that Monica had taken advantage of
the liberty he had of late allowed her? If a woman could not endure a
direct, searching gaze, must it not imply some enormous
wickedness?--seeing that nature has armed them for this very trial.

In her setting forth for the railway station hurry was again evident,
and disinclination to exchange parting words. If the eagerness were
simple and honest, would she not have accepted his suggestion and have
gone in the morning?

For five minutes after her departure he stood in the hall, staring
before him. A new jealousy, a horrible constriction of the heart, had
begun to torture him. He went and walked about in the library, but
could not dispel his suffering. Vain to keep repeating that Monica was
incapable of baseness. Of that he was persuaded, but none the less a
hideous image returned upon his mental vision--a horror--a pollution o