“The summer came; and one Saturday in early June, Eilie, I, and Francis—­I won’t tell you his other name—­went riding.  The night had been wet; there was no dust, and presently the sun came out—­a glorious day!  We rode a long way.  About seven o’clock we started back-slowly, for it was still hot, and there was all the cool of night before us.  It was nine o’clock when we came to Richmond Park.  A grand place, Richmond Park; and in that half-light wonderful, the deer moving so softly, you might have thought they were spirits.  We were silent too—­great trees have that effect on me....

“Who can say when changes come?  Like a shift of the wind, the old passes, the new is on you.  I am telling you now of a change like that.  Without a sign of warning, Eilie put her horse into a gallop.  ’What are you doing?’ I shouted.  She looked back with a smile, then he dashed past me too.  A hornet might have stung them both:  they galloped over fallen trees, under low hanging branches, up hill and down.  I had to watch that madness!  My horse was not so fast.  I rode like a demon; but fell far behind.  I am not a man who takes things quietly.  When I came up with them at last, I could not speak for rage.  They were riding side by side, the reins on the horses’ necks, looking in each other’s faces.  ’You should take care,’ I said.  ‘Care!’ she cried; ’life is not all taking care!’ My anger left me.  I dropped behind, as grooms ride behind their mistresses...  Jealousy!  No torture is so ceaseless or so black....  In those minutes a hundred things came up in me—­a hundred memories, true, untrue, what do I know?  My soul was poisoned.  I tried to reason with myself.  It was absurd to think such things!  It was unmanly....  Even if it were true, one should try to be a gentleman!  But I found myself laughing; yes, sir, laughing at that word.”  He spoke faster, as if pouring his heart out not to a live listener, but to the night.  “I could not sleep that night.  To lie near her with those thoughts in my brain was impossible!  I made an excuse, and sat up with some papers.  The hardest thing in life is to see a thing coming and be able to do nothing to prevent it.  What could I do?  Have you noticed how people may become utter strangers without a word?  It only needs a thought....  The very next day she said:  ‘I want to go to Lucy’s.’  ‘Alone?’ ‘Yes.’  I had made up my mind by then that she must do just as she wished.  Perhaps I acted wrongly; I do not know what one ought to do in such a case; but before she went I said to her:  ‘Eilie, what is it?’ ‘I don’t know,’ she answered; and I kissed her—­that was all....  A month passed; I wrote to her nearly every day, and I had short letters from her, telling me very little of herself.  Dalton was a torture to me, for I could not tell him; he had a conviction that she was going to become a mother.  ‘Ah, Brune!’ he said, ‘my poor wife was just like that.’  Life, sir, is a somewhat ironical