But if she did not understand her own misery, she understood vaguely what he had said to her.  She got up and went to her writing-table where a letter lay folded, ready for its envelope.  She gave it to him without a word.

“Do you mean me to read this?” he asked.

“Yes; if you like.”  She answered without looking at him; apparently she was absorbed in addressing her envelope.

He opened the letter gingerly, and read in his wife’s schoolgirl handwriting:—­

“Dear Louis,—­It’s awfully good of you but I’m afraid I can’t go with you to the ‘Lyceum’ to-morrow night so I return the ticket with many thanks, in case you want to give it to somebody else.  Nevill has come home—­why of course you saw him—­and I am so happy and I want all my time for him.

“I thought you’d like to know this.  I’m sure he will be delighted to see you whenever you like to call.—­Yours sincerely,

“Molly Tyson.

“P.S.—­Thanks awfully for the lovely flowers.  You can smell them all over the flat!”

“Come here, you fool,” he said gently.

But Mrs. Nevill Tyson was stamping her envelope with great deliberation and care.  She handed it to him at arm’s length and darted away.  He heard her turning the key in her bedroom door with a determined click.

He read her letter over again twice.  The ridiculous little phrases convinced him of the groundlessness of his suspicion.  Punctuation would have argued premeditation, and premeditation guilt.  “Nevill has come home—­why of course you saw him.”  She had actually forgotten that Stanistreet had been there on the evening of his arrival.

He laughed so loud that Mrs. Nevill Tyson heard him in her bedroom.

An hour later he heard her softly unlocking her door.  He smiled.  She might be as innocent as she pleased, but she had made him make a cursed fool of himself, and he meant that she should suffer for that.

He threw Stanistreet’s flowers out of the window, put Molly’s note up in its envelope and sent it to the post.  Then he sat down to think.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson’s room was opposite the one she had just left.  She stood for a moment before her looking-glass, studying her own reflection.  She took off her pearl necklace and spanned her white throat with her tiny hands.  And as she looked she was glad.  When all was said and done she looked beautiful—­beautiful after her small fashion.  She turned this way and that to make perfectly sure of the fact.  She had realized long ago how much her hold on Nevill’s affections depended on it.  His love had waxed and waned with her beauty.  Well—­She opened her door before getting into bed, and for the next hour she lay listening and wondering.  She saw the line of light at the top of the drawing-room door disappear as the big lamp went out.  It was followed by a fainter streak.  Nevill must have lit the little lamp on the table by the window. (Oh, dear!  He