apart from women as I have done for so many years - that merely taking a woman to church and putting a ring upon her finger could by any possibility involve one in such a daily, continuous tragedy as that now shared by her and me!'

`Well, I could admit some excuse for letting her leave you, provided she kept to herself. But to go attended by a cavalier - that makes a difference.'

`Not a bit. Suppose, as I believe, she would rather endure her present misery than be made to promise to keep apart from him? All that is a question for herself. It is not the same thing at all as the treachery of living on with a husband and playing him false.... However, she has not distinctly implied living with him as wife, though I think she means to.... And to the best of my understanding it is not an ignoble, merely animal, feeling between the two: that is the worst of it; because it makes me think their affection will be enduring. I did not mean to confess to you that in the first jealous weeks of my marriage, before I had come to my right mind, I hid myself in the school one evening when they were together there, and I heard what they said. I am ashamed of it now, though I suppose I was only exercising a legal right. I found from their manner that an extraordinary affinity, or sympathy, entered into their attachment, which somehow took away all flavour of grossness. Their supreme desire is to be together - to share each other's emotions, and fancies, and dreams.'

`Platonic!'

`Well no. Shelleyan would be nearer to it. They remind me of - what are their names - Laon and Cythna. Also of Paul and Virginia a little. The more I reflect, the more entirely I am on their side!'

`But if people did as you want to do, there'd be a general domestic disintegration. The family would no longer be the social unit.'

`Yes - I am all abroad, I suppose!' said Phillotson sadly. `I was never a very bright reasoner, you remember.... And yet, I don't see why the woman and the children should not be the unit without the man.'

`By the Lord Harry! - Matriarchy! ... Does she say all this too?'

`Oh no. She little thinks I have out-Sued Sue in this - all in the last twelve hours!'

`It will upset all received opinion hereabout. Good God - what will Shaston say!'

`I don't say that it won't. I don't know - I don't know! ... As I say, I am only a feeler, not a reasoner.'

`Now,' said Gillingham, `let us take it quietly, and have something to drink over it.' He went under the stairs, and produced a bottle of cider-wine, of which they drank a rummer each. `I think you are rafted, and not yourself,' he continued. `Do go back and make up your mind to put up with a few whims. But keep her. I hear on all sides that she's a charming young thing.'

`Ah yes! That's the bitterness of it! Well, I won't stay. I have a long walk before me.'

Gillingham accompanied his friend a mile on his way, and at parting expressed his hope that this consultation, singular as its subject was, would be the renewal of their old comradeship. `Stick to her!' were his last words, flung into the darkness after Phillotson; from which his friend answered `Aye, aye!'

But when Phillotson was alone under the clouds of night, and no sound was audible but that of the purling tributaries of the Stour, he said, `So Gillingham, my friend, you had no stronger arguments against it than those!'

`I think she ought to be smacked, and brought to her senses - that's what I think!' murmured Gillingham, as he walked back alone.