wife an
incident in his life, in spite of the fact that he thought he loved
her; that he had been proud of her splendid personality; and that, with
passionate chivalry, he had resented any criticism of her.

He thought still, as he did on the Antoine, that Carmen's figure had the
lines of the Venus of Milo, that her head would have been a model either
for a Madonna, or for Joan of Arc, or the famous Isabella of Aragon.
Having visited the Louvre and the Luxembourg all in one day, he felt he
was entitled to make such comparisons, and that in making them he was on
sure ground. He had loved to kiss Carmen in the neck, it was so full
and soft and round; and when she went about the garden with her dress
shortened, and he saw her ankles, even after he had been married
thirteen years, and she was thirty-four, he still admired, he still
thought that the world was a good place when it produced such a woman.
And even when she had lashed him with her tongue, as she did sometimes,
he still laughed--after the smart was over--because he liked spirit.
He would never have a horse that had not some blood, and he had never
driven a sluggard in his life more than once. But wife and child and
world, and all that therein was, existed largely because they were
necessary to Jean Jacques.

That is the way it had been; and it was as though the firmament had been
rolled up before his eyes, exposing the everlasting mysteries, when
he saw his wife in the arms of the master-carpenter. It was like some
frightening dream.

The paper and pencil waked him to reality. He looked towards his house,
he looked the way George Masson had gone, and he knew that what he had
seen was real life and not a dream. The paper fell from his hand. He did
not pick it up. Its fall represented the tumbling walls of life, was the
earthquake which shook his world into chaos. He ground the sheet into
the gravel with his heel. There would be no cheese-factory built at St.
Saviour's for many a year to come. The man of initiative, the man of the
hundred irons would not have the hundred and one, or keep the hundred
hot any more; because he would be so busy with the iron which had
entered into his soul.

When the paper had been made one with the earth, a problem buried for
ever, Jean Jacques pulled himself up to his full height, as though
facing a great thing which he must do.

"Well, of course!" he said firmly.

That was what his honour, Judge Carcasson, had said a few hou