chariot of the gods and try to do the driving.
Be passive--be passive, and you'll be happier!"

"Oh, as to that--!" She swept it aside with one of her airy motions.
"But Dillon, for instance--would _he_ have been happier if I'd been
passive?"

Amherst seemed to ponder. "There again--how can one tell?"

"And the risk's not worth taking?"

"No!"

She paused, and they looked at each other again. "Do you mean that
seriously, I wonder? Do you----"

"Act on it myself? God forbid! The gods drive so badly. There's poor
Dillon...he happened to be in their way...as we all are at times." He
pulled himself up, and went on in a matter-of-fact tone: "In Dillon's
case, however, my axioms don't apply. When my wife heard the truth she
was, of course, immensely kind to him; and if it hadn't been for you she
might never have known."

Justine smiled. "I think you would have found out--I was only the humble
instrument. But now--" she hesitated--"now you must be able to do so
much--"

Amherst lifted his head, and she saw the colour rise under his fair
skin. "Out at Westmore? You've never been there since? Yes--my wife has
made some changes; but it's all so problematic--and one would have to
live here...."

"You don't, then?"

He answered by an imperceptible shrug. "Of course I'm here often; and
she comes now and then. But the journey's tiresome, and it is not always
easy for her to get away." He checked himself, and Justine saw that he,
in turn, was suddenly conscious of the incongruity of explaining and
extenuating his personal situation to a stranger. "But then we're _not_
strangers!" a voice in her exulted, just as he added, with an
embarrassed attempt to efface and yet justify his moment of expansion:
"That reminds me--I think you know my wife. I heard her asking Mrs.
Dressel about you. She wants so much to see you."

The transition had been effected, at the expense of dramatic interest,
but to the obvious triumph of social observances; and to Justine, after
all, regaining at his side the group about the marquee, the interest was
not so much diminished as shifted to the no less suggestive problem of
studying the friend of her youth in the unexpected character of John
Amherst's wife.

Meanwhile, however, during the brief transit across the Gaines
greensward, her thoughts were still busy with Amherst. She had seen at
once that the peculiar sense of intimacy reawakened by their meeting had
been chilled and deflected by her