But one day the doctor who was attending her had a few words in private with Rolfe, and told him that he had made an unpleasant discovery —­ Mrs Rolfe was in the habit of taking a narcotic.  At first, when the doctor asked if this was the case, she had denied it, but in the end he had elicited a confession, and a promise that the dangerous habit should be relinquished.

’I was on no account to mention this to you, and you mustn’t let it be seen that I have done so.  If it goes on, and I’m rather afraid it will for a short time, I shall tell her that you must be informed of it.’

Harvey, to whom such a suspicion had never occurred, waited anxiously for the doctor’s further reports.  As was anticipated, Alma’s promise held good only for a day or two, and when again she confessed, her husband was called into counsel.  The trio went through a grave and disagreeable scene.  On the doctor’s departure, Alma sat for a long time stubbornly and dolorously mute; then came tears and passionate penitence.

‘You mustn’t think I’m a slave to it,’ she said.  ’It isn’t so at all.  I can break myself off it at once, and I will.’

‘Then why did you go on after the doctor’s first warning?’

’Out of perversity, nothing else.  I suffer much from bad nights, but it wasn’t that; I could bear it.  I said to myself that I should do as I liked.’  She gave a tearful laugh.

’That’s the whole truth.  I felt just like a child when it’s determined to be naughty.’

‘But this is far too serious a matter ——­’

’I know, I know.  There shall be an end of it.  I had my own way, and I’m satisfied.  Now I shall be reasonable.’

Judging from results, this seemed to be a true explanation.  From that day the doctor saw no reason for doubt.  But Harvey had a most uncomfortable sense of strangeness in his wife’s behaviour; it seemed to him that the longer he lived with Alma, the less able he was to read her mind or comprehend her motives.  It did not reassure him to reflect that a majority of husbands are probably in the same case.

Meanwhile trouble was once more brewing in the back regions of the house.  The cook made an excuse for ‘giving notice’.  Rolfe, in his fury, talked about abandoning the house and going with wife and child to some village in the heart of France; yet this was hardly practicable.  Again were advertisements sent forth; again came the ordeal of correspondence —­ this time undertaken by Harvey himself, for Alma was unequal to it.  The cook whom they at length engaged declared with fervour that the one thing she panted for was downright hard work; she couldn’t abide easy places, and in fact had left her last because too little was expected of her.

‘She will stay for two months,’ said Harvey, ’and then it will be time for the others to think of moving.  Oh, we shall get used to it.’