wonderful thing, Kate, a thing one can’t live all to oneself; a thing one shares with everybody, so that when another suffers, one suffers too.  It’s come to me that what one has doesn’t matter a bit—­it’s what one does, and how one sympathises with other people.  It came to me in the most extraordinary vivid way, when I was on that jury, watching that poor little rat of a soldier in his trap; it’s the first time I’ve ever felt—­the—­the spirit of Christ, you know.  It’s a wonderful thing, Kate—­wonderful!  We haven’t been close—­really close, you and I, so that we each understand what the other is feeling.  It’s all in that, you know; understanding—­sympathy—­it’s priceless.  When I saw that poor little devil taken down and sent back to his regiment to begin his sorrows all over again—­wanting his wife, thinking and thinking of her just as you know I would be thinking and wanting you, I felt what an awful outside sort of life we lead, never telling each other what we really think and feel, never being really close.  I daresay that little chap and his wife keep nothing from each other—­live each other’s lives.  That’s what we ought to do.  Let’s get to feeling that what really matters is—­understanding and loving, and not only just saying it as we all do, those fellows on the jury, and even that poor devil of a judge—­what an awful life judging one’s fellow-creatures.

“When I left that poor little Tommy this morning, and ever since, I’ve longed to get back here quietly to you and tell you about it, and make a beginning.  There’s something wonderful in this, and I want you to feel it as I do, because you mean such a lot to me.”

This was what he wanted to say to his wife, not touching, or kissing her, just looking into her eyes, watching them soften and glow as they surely must, catching the infection of his new ardour.  And he felt unsteady, fearfully unsteady with the desire to say it all as it should be said:  swiftly, quietly, with the truth and fervour of his feeling.

The hall was not lit up, for daylight still lingered under the new arrangement.  He went towards the drawing-room, but from the very door shied off to his study and stood irresolute under the picture of a “Man catching a flea” (Dutch school), which had come down to him from his father.  The governess would be in there with his wife!  He must wait.  Essential to go straight to Kathleen and pour it all out, or he would never do it.  He felt as nervous as an undergraduate going up for his viva’ voce.  This thing was so big, so astoundingly and unexpectedly important.  He was suddenly afraid of his wife, afraid of her coolness and her grace, and that something Japanese about her—­of all those attributes he had been accustomed to admire most; afraid, as it were, of her attraction.  He felt young to-night, almost boyish; would she see that he was not really fifteen years older than herself, and she not really a part of his collection, of all