n.

McGreggor had left the room. Oh! am I very wicked? I kissed the
writing before I threw the paper in the fire!

And so Augustus is going to the war, after all. It must have been some
very strong influence which persuaded him to volunteer, he who hated
the very thought.

I felt bitterly annoyed with myself that this news did not cause me
any grief. I have been this man's wife for five months, and his going
into danger in a far country leaves me cold. But I did, indeed, grieve
for his mother. Her many good qualities came back to me. This will be
a terrible blow to her.

I looked up at the little pastel by La Tour. The sprightly French
Marquise smiled back at me.

"Good-bye," I said. "You, pretty Marquise, would call me a fool
because to-day Antony is not my lover. But I--oh, I am glad!"

He did not even kiss my finger-tips last night. We parted sadly after
a storm of words neither he nor I had ever meant to speak.

"_Il s'en faut bien que nous commissions tout ce que nos passions nous
font faire!_"

Once more La Rochefoucauld has spoken truth.

Why the situation is as it is I cannot tell. In my bringing up, the
idea of taking a lover after marriage seemed a more or less natural
thing, and not altogether a deadly sin, provided the affair was
conducted _sans fanfaronnade_, without scandal. It was not that
grandmamma and the Marquis actually discussed such matters in my
hearing, but the general tone of their conversation gave that
impression.

Marriage, as the Marquis said to me, was not a pleasure--it is a means
to an end, a tax of society. The _agrements_ of life came afterwards.
I had always understood he had been grandmamma's lover.

Once I heard him express this sentiment when I was supposed to be
reading my book: The marriage vows, he said, were the only ones a
gentleman might break without great blemish to his honor. This was the
atmosphere I had always lived in, and since my wedding the people of
my own class that I have met do not seem to hold different views. Lord
Tilchester is Babykins's lover. The Duke has passed on from several
women, and, to come nearer home, there are my husband and Lady
Grenellen. Only Lady Tilchester seems noble and above all these
earthly things.

Why did I hesitate? I do not know. There is a something in my spirit
which cried out against the meanness of it, the degradation, the
sacrilege. I could not break my word to Augustus. Oh! I could not
stoop to desecrate myself,