she found herself looking in the garden where the aproned
man was at work. But it was Lennox that she saw. Again and again since
the wedding-evening, when Paliser had told her of the unscrambled eggs,
she had wondered about the broken engagement. On that evening she had
felt that she had taken the wrong road and had lost her way. The feeling
was momentary. If Lennox had never been engaged, the result would have
been the same. Not once had he so much as said boo! He had not even
looked it. At table, on the wedding-evening, the unscrambled eggs had
not tasted very good, but reflection had salted them and since then, in
reviewing the matter, it had occurred to her that it was none of her
business.

Now as she looked out on the garden she wondered whether he had cared
very greatly for this girl, for if he had, what then did she mean by
throwing over a man who was too good for her, too good for anybody?

She sighed and absently looked again at the gardener. He was bending
down, occupied in planting something. Since she had first noticed him he
had half-circled a parterre and she was about to telephone and ask if
the car were ready when he straightened, turned, extracted a pipe and
attempted to light it.

The air was very still, there was no breeze, but the match was
ineffective. On his trousers, with a backward movement, he struck
another match and raised it to the bowl. The flame, faintly blue,
mounted and, with it, a curl of smoke. But it was not Cassy or, more
exactly, it was not her objective self, that saw it. It was her
subjective self that registered and afterward reproduced that momentary
and entirely commonplace incident. What the objective Cassy saw was not
the flame or the smoke or the pipe, but the hand that held the match. It
was thumbless. Many hands are. From the hand she looked at the man's
face and gave a little scream, instantly suppressed.

But her mouth twitched, she tried to swallow and she experienced, what
was new to her, an odd sensation in the epiglottis. She did not remember
that she had ever been what is called sick at the stomach, none the less
she realised that she was on the point of becoming so. Like the little
scream, she choked it back. But the immanence of nausea stifled her, and
she sat down on a brocade-covered chair.

Her hand had gone to her throat and though almost at once the sensation
subsided, she held it there. The gold bands of the rings that were
pressed against her throat c