Lightmark had been obliged to pay a hasty visit to Berlin, on business connected with an International Art Congress, and his wife at the last moment decided, somewhat to his relief, that she would not accompany him.  A man of naturally quick perception, and with a certain vein of nervous alertness underlying his outer clothing of careless candour, he could not help feeling that when he was alone with his wife he was being watched, that traps were set for him—­in short, that he was suspected.  And not only when they were alone had he cause for alarm:  in crowded rooms, at mammoth dinner-parties, and colossal assemblies he frequently became aware, by a sense even quicker than vision, that his wife’s eyes were directed upon him from the farther side of the room, the opposite end of the dinner-table, with that wistful, childish expression in their depths, which, growing sterner and more critical of late, had ended by boring him.

Before Rainham’s death, Eve, in her private discussions of the situation, had generally concluded by dismissing the subject petulantly, with a summing-up only partially convincing, that everything would come right in the end; that in time that miserable scene would be forgotten or explained away; and that the old intimacy, of which it was at once so bitter and so pleasant to dream, would be restored.

Her training—­of which her mother was justly proud—­had endowed her with a respect for social convention too great to allow her to think of rebelling against the existing order of things.  She consoled herself by the reflection that at least she had committed no fault, and that no active discipline of penitence could justly be expected of her.

Concerning the truth of Rainham’s story she could not fail to harbour doubts; that her husband was concealing something was daily more plainly revealed to her.

It was hard that she should suffer, but what could she do?  At the bottom of her heart, in spite of the feeling of resentment which assailed her when—­as it often did—­the idea occurred to her that he had not exhibited towards her the perfect frankness which their old friendship demanded, she pitied Rainham.  There were even times—­such was her state of doubt—­when she pitied her husband, and blamed herself for suspecting him of—­she hardly owned what.

But, most of all, she pitied herself.  She felt that in any case she had been wronged, whether Philip’s ill-told tale was true or false.

But her pride enabled her to keep her doubts locked within her own heart, to present a smiling, if occasionally pale, face to the world, in whose doings she took so large a part, and even to deceive Mrs. Sylvester.

And now Philip was dead!  The severance, which she had persuaded herself was only temporary, was on a sudden rendered inexorably complete and eternal.

The blow was a cruel one, and for a time it seemed to be succeeded by a kind of rebellious insensibility.  Eve felt demoralized, and careless of the future; her frame of mind was precisely that of the man who is making his first hasty steps along the headlong road which is popularly spoken of as leading to the devil.