others not privileged to enjoy her charms.  Her rather queer and ironical beauty, her cool irreproachable wifeliness, was a constant balm to him.  They would give dinner parties again, have their friends down from town, and he would once more enjoy sitting at the foot of the dinner table while Kathleen sat at the head, with the light soft on her ivory shoulders, behind flowers she had arranged in that original way of hers, and fruit which he had grown in his hot-houses; once more he would take legitimate interest in the wine he offered to his guests—­once more stock that Chinese cabinet wherein he kept cigars.  Yes—­there was a certain satisfaction in these days of privation, if only from the anticipation they created.

The sprinkling of villas had become continuous on either side of the high road; and women going out to shop, tradesmen’s boys delivering victuals, young men in khaki, began to abound.  Now and then a limping or bandaged form would pass—­some bit of human wreckage; and Mr. Bosengate would think mechanically:  ’Another of those poor devils!  Wonder if we’ve had his case before us!’

Running his car into the best hotel garage of the little town, he made his way leisurely over to the court.  It stood back from the market-place, and was already lapped by a sea of persons having, as in the outer ring at race meetings, an air of business at which one must not be caught out, together with a soaked or flushed appearance.  Mr. Bosengate could not resist putting his handkerchief to his nose.  He had carefully drenched it with lavender water, and to this fact owed, perhaps, his immunity from the post of foreman on the jury—­for, say what you will about the English, they have a deep instinct for affairs.

He found himself second in the front row of the jury box, and through the odour of “Sanitas” gazed at the judge’s face expressionless up there, for all the world like a bewigged bust.  His fellows in the box had that appearance of falling between two classes characteristic of jurymen.  Mr. Bosengate was not impressed.  On one side of him the foreman sat, a prominent upholsterer, known in the town as “Gentleman Fox.”  His dark and beautifully brushed and oiled hair and moustache, his radiant linen, gold watch and chain, the white piping to his waistcoat, and a habit of never saying “Sir” had long marked him out from commoner men; he undertook to bury people too, to save them trouble; and was altogether superior.  On the other side Mr. Bosengate had one of those men, who, except when they sit on juries, are never seen without a little brown bag, and the appearance of having been interrupted in a drink.  Pale and shiny, with large loose eyes shifting from side to side, he had an underdone voice and uneasy flabby hands.  Mr. Bosengate disliked sitting next to him.  Beyond this commercial traveller sat a dark pale young man with spectacles; beyond him again, a short old man with grey moustache, mutton chops, and innumerable