came up, of the odd business that life was; his
strong interest in the social and industrial problems, and in the
political questions from time to time before the public attention.

He could be imagined assembling the parts, dragging them in, checking
them over, slamming the door, and--"How on earth? What on earth?" There
was a key to all these problems. There was a definite way of
cooerdinating the parts of each. But what?

He began to have the feeling that in all the puzzles, not only, though
particularly, of his own life as he had come to live it, but of life in
general as it is lived, some mysterious part was missing.

That was as far as he could get. He was like a man groping with his hand
through a hole in a great door for a key lying on the other side.
Nothing was to be seen through the hole, and only the arm to the elbow
could get through it. Not the shape of the key nor its position was
known.

But he was absolutely certain it was there.

One day he might put his hand on it.

CHAPTER IV

I

Mabel was two years younger than Sabre, twenty-five at the time of her
marriage and just past her thirtieth birthday when the separate rooms
were first occupied. Her habit of sudden laughter, rather loud, which
Sabre first noticed in connection with their differing views on the mean
streets visit, was rather characteristic of her. Her laugh came
suddenly, and very heartily, at anything that amused her and without her
first smiling or suggesting by any other sign that she was amused. And
it came thus abruptly out of a face whose expression was normally rather
severe. Probably of the same mentality was her habit of what Sabre
called "flying up." She "flew up" without her speech first warming up;
but of her flying up, unlike her sudden burst of laughter, Sabre came to
know certain premonitory symptoms in her face. Her face what he called
"tightened." In particular he used to notice a curious little
constriction of the sides of her nose, rather as though invisible
tweezers were pressing it.

She had rather a long nose and this pleased her, for she once read
somewhere that long noses were aristocratic. She stroked her nose as she
read.

Her complexion was pale, though this was perhaps exaggerated by her
colouring, which was dark. Her features were noticeably regular and
noticeably refined, though her eyes were the least little bit inclined
to be prominent: when Sabre married the Dean of Tidborough's only
daug