was pleasure in itself. He was perfectly prepared for an
open rupture with the past, or, indeed, for any sudden and violent course
of action, the more violent the better. He dreamed of cataclysms and
upheavals, of trunks packed hastily in the night, of flight by express
trains from London, the place of all disaster. His soul would have been
appeased by a telegram.

Instead of telegrams he received doctors' bulletins, contradictory,
ambiguous, elusive. They began to get on his nerves.

Still, there could be no possible doubt that he had attained. At any rate
he had advanced a considerable distance on the way of peace. It looked
like it; he was happy without anything to make him happy, a state which
seemed to be a feature of the New Life.

The New Life was not exhausting. He had an idea that he could keep it up
indefinitely. But at the end of the first fortnight he realized that he
was drifting, not towards peace, but towards a horrible, teeming,
stagnant calm. Before long he would be given over to dullness and
immitigable ennui.

A perfectly sane man would have faced the facts frankly. He would have
pulled himself together, taken himself out of the house, and got
something to do. And under any other circumstances, this is what Tyson
would have done. Unfortunately, he considered it his duty as a repentant
husband to stay at home; and at home he stayed, cultivating his emotions.
Ah, those emotions! If Tyson had been simply and passionately vicious
there might have been some chance for him. But sentimentalism, subtlest
source of moral corruption, worked in him like that hectic disease that
flames in the colors of life, flouting its wretched victim with an
extravagant hope. The deadly taint was spreading, stirred into frightful
activity by the shock of his wife's illness. He stayed indoors, lounging
in easy-chairs, and lying about on sofas; he smoked, drank, yawned; he
hovered in passages, loomed in doorways; he hung about his wife's
bedroom, chattering aimlessly, or sat in silence and deep depression by
her side. In vain she implored him to go out, for goodness' sake, and get
some fresh air. Once or twice, to satisfy her, he went, and yawned
through a miserable evening at some theatre, when, as often as not, he
left before the end of the first act. Hereditary conscience rose up and
thrust him violently from the house; outside, the spirit of the Baptist
minister, of the guileless cultivator of orchids, haled him by the co