tent and patriot
in one:--in Barnes, on the other, so heavy, inert, and bewildered, a
ship-wrecked suppliant as it were, clinging to the knees of that very
America which had so lightly and irresponsibly wronged him.

It was Penrose who broke the silence.

"Is there any chance of Mrs. Barnes's marrying again?" he asked.

Barnes turned to him.

"Not that I know of."

"There's no one else in the case?"

"I never heard of anyone." Roger gave a short, excited laugh. "What
she's done, she's done because she was tired of me, not because she was
in love with anyone else. That was her great score in the divorce
case--that there was nobody."

Biting and twisting his lip, in a trick that recalled to French the
beautiful Eton lad, cracking his brains in pupil-room over a bit of
Latin prose, Roger glanced, frowning, from one to the other of these
three men who felt for him, whose resentment of the wrong that had been
done him, whose pity for his calamity showed plainly enough through
their reticent speech.

His sense, indeed, of their sympathy began to move him, to break down
his own self-command. No doubt, also, the fatal causes that ultimately
ruined his will-power were already at work. At any rate, he broke out
into sudden speech about his case. His complexion, now unhealthily
delicate, like the complexion of a girl, had flushed deeply. As he spoke
he looked mainly at French.

"There's lots of things you don't know," he said in a hesitating voice,
as though appealing to his old friend. And rapidly he told the story of
Daphne's flight from Heston. Evidently since his return home many
details that were once obscure had become plain to him; and the three
listeners could perceive how certain new information had goaded, and
stung him afresh. He dwelt on the letters which had reached him during
his first week's absence from home, after the quarrel--letters from
Daphne and Miss Farmer, which were posted at intervals from Heston by
their accomplice, the young architect, while the writers of them were
hurrying across the Atlantic. The servants had been told that Mrs.
Barnes, Miss Farmer, and the little girl were going to London for a day
or two, and suspected nothing. "I wrote long letters--lots of them--to
my wife. I thought I had made everything right--not that there ever had
been anything wrong, you understand,--seriously. But in some ways I had
behaved like a fool."

He threw himself back in his chair, pressing his hands