rful self-control--and--yes, supposing he were
not quite a sensual brute she had been very hard. She knew what pride
meant; she had abundance herself, and she realized for the first time
how she must have been stinging his.

But there were facts which could not be got over. He had married her for
her uncle's money and then shown at once that her person tempted him,
when it could not be anything else.

She got up and walked about the room. There was a scent of him
somewhere--the scent of a fine cigar. She felt uneasy of she knew not
what. Did she wish him to come back? Was she excited? Should she go out?
And then, for no reason on earth, she suddenly burst into tears.

* * * * *

They met for dinner, and she herself had never looked or been more icy
cold than Tristram was. They went down into the restaurant and there, of
course, he encountered some friends dining, too, in a merry party; and
he nodded gayly to them and told her casually who they were, and then
went on with his dinner. His manner had lost its constraint, it was just
casually indifferent. And soon they started for the theater, and it was
he who drew as far away as he could, when they got into the automobile.

They had a box--and the piece had begun. It was one of those impossibly
amusing Paris farces, on the borderland of all convention but so
intensely comic that none could help their mirth, and Tristram shook
with laughter and forgot for the time that he was a most miserable young
man. And even Zara laughed. But it did not melt things between them.
Tristram's feelings had been too wounded for any ordinary circumstances
to cause him to relent.

"Do you care for some supper?" he said coldly when they came out. But
she answered. "No," so he took her back, and as far as the lift where he
left her, politely saying "Good night," and she saw him disappear
towards the door, and knew he had again gone out.

And going on to the sitting-room alone, she found the English mail had
come in, and there were the letters on the table, at least a dozen for
Tristram, as she sorted them out--a number in women's handwriting--and
but two for herself. One was from her uncle, full of agreeable
congratulations subtly expressed; and the other, forwarded from Park
Lane, from Mirko, as yet ignorant of her change of state, a small,
funny, pathetic letter that touched her heart. He was better, and again
able to go out, and in a fortnight Agatha, th