way.'

'I'm very sorry you speak like this, Reardon,' said the other, with calm
insolence. 'It confirms unpleasant ideas, you know.'

'What do you mean?'

'Why, one can't help thinking that you are rather too much at your ease
under the circumstances. It isn't exactly an everyday thing, you know,
for a man's wife to be sent back to her own people--'

Reardon could not endure the sound of these words. He interrupted hotly.

'I can't discuss it with you. You are utterly unable to comprehend me
and my position, utterly! It would be useless to defend myself. You must
take whatever view seems to you the natural one.'

John, having finished his cigarette, rose.

'The natural view is an uncommonly disagreeable one,' he said. 'However,
I have no intention of quarrelling with you. I'll only just say that,
as I take a share in the expenses of my mother's house, this question
decidedly concerns me; and I'll add that I think it ought to concern you
a good deal more than it seems to.'

Reardon, ashamed already of his violence, paused upon these remarks.

'It shall,' he uttered at length, coldly. 'You have put it clearly
enough to me, and you shan't have spoken in vain. Is there anything else
you wish to say?'

'Thank you; I think not.'

They parted with distant civility, and Reardon closed the door behind
his visitor.

He knew that his character was seen through a distorting medium by Amy's
relatives, to some extent by Amy herself; but hitherto the reflection
that this must always be the case when a man of his kind is judged by
people of the world had strengthened him in defiance. An endeavour
to explain himself would be maddeningly hopeless; even Amy did not
understand aright the troubles through which his intellectual and moral
nature was passing, and to speak of such experiences to Mrs Yule or to
John would be equivalent to addressing them in alien tongues; he and
they had no common criterion by reference to which he could make
himself intelligible. The practical tone in which John had explained the
opposing view of the situation made it impossible for him to proceed as
he had purposed. Amy would never come to him in his poor lodgings; her
mother, her brother, all her advisers would regard such a thing as out
of the question. Very well; recognising this, he must also recognise his
wife's claim upon him for material support. It was not in his power to
supply her with means sufficient to live upon, but what he could