to persuade myself that it indicated the only
satisfactory termination to the brief drama of the night. I attempted to
see the affair as a slightly ridiculous episode that had occupied exactly
twelve hours and ended with an inevitable bathos. I pictured the return of
a disgraced and penitent Brenda, and the temporary re-employment, as an
antidote to gossip, of the defeated Banks. They would be parted, of
course. She might be taken abroad, or to Scotland, and by the time she
returned, he would have been sent back to the country from which he had
been injudiciously recalled. Finally, old Jervaise would be able to take
up his life again with his old zest. I believed that he was a man who took
his pleasures with a certain gusto. He had been quite gay at the dance
before the coming of the scandal that had temporarily upset his peace of
mind.

All this imaginary restitution was perfectly reasonable. I could "see"
things happening just as I had thought them. The only trouble was that I
could find no personal satisfaction in the consideration of the Jervaises'
restored happiness. I was aware of a feeling of great disappointment for
which I could not account; and although I tried to persuade myself that
this feeling was due to the evaporation of the emotional interest of the
moving drama that had been playing, I found that explanation insufficient.
I was conscious of a loss that intimately concerned myself, the loss of
something to which I had been unconsciously looking forward.

I came out of my reverie to find that I had wandered half round the house,
across the formal pleasance, and that I was now at the door leading into
the kitchen garden.

I hesitated a moment with a distinct sense of wrong-doing, before I opened
the door with the air of one who defies his own conscience, and passed up
the avenue between the gouty espaliers--fine old veterans they were, and
as I could see, now, loaded with splendid fruit. The iron gates that led
out into the Park were locked, but a gardener--the head gardener, I
suppose--came out of one of the greenhouses close at hand, and let me
through.

I began to hurry, then. It was already twenty past twelve, and lunch was
at half-past one. Just what I proposed to do, or whom I expected to see,
at the Home Farm, I had no idea; but I was suddenly determined to get
there and back before lunch. The walk would not take me more than a
quarter of an hour each way, but, for no reason that I could explain