of centuries.  With true Scotch caution, indeed, even in the midst of his wrath, Robert Monteith had never said a word to any one at Brackenhurst of how his wife had left him.  He was too proud a man, if it came to that, to acknowledge what seemed to him a personal disgrace, till circumstances should absolutely force such acknowledgment upon him.  He had glossed it over meanwhile with the servants and neighbours by saying that Mrs. Monteith had gone away with the children for their accustomed holiday as always in August.  Frida had actually chosen the day appointed for their seaside journey as the fittest moment for her departure with Bertram, so his story was received without doubt or inquiry.  He had bottled up his wrath in his own silent soul.  There was still room, therefore, to make all right again at home in the eyes of the world—­if but Frida was willing.  So he sat there long, staring hard at his wife in speechless debate, and discussing with himself whether or not to make temporary overtures of peace to her.

In this matter, his pride itself fought hard with his pride.  That is the wont of savages.  Would it not be better, now Bertram Ingledew had fairly disappeared for ever from their sphere, to patch up a hollow truce for a time at least with Frida, and let all things be to the outer eye exactly as they had always been?  The bewildering and brain-staggering occurrences of the last half-hour, indeed, had struck deep and far into his hard Scotch nature.  The knowledge that the man who had stolen his wife from him (as he phrased it to himself in his curious belated mediaeval phraseology) was not a real live man of flesh and blood at all, but an evanescent phantom of the twenty-fifth century, made him all the more ready to patch up for the time-being a nominal reconciliation.  His nerves—­for even he had nerves—­were still trembling to the core with the mystic events of that wizard morning; but clearer and clearer still it dawned upon him each moment that if things were ever to be set right at all they must be set right then and there, before he returned to the inn, and before Frida once more went back to their children.  To be sure, it was Frida’s place to ask forgiveness first, and make the first advances.  But Frida made no move.  So after sitting there long, salving his masculine vanity with the flattering thought that after all his rival was no mere man at all, but a spirit, an avatar, a thing of pure imagination, he raised his head at last and looked inquiringly towards Frida.

“Well?” he said slowly.

Frida raised her head from her hands and gazed across at him scornfully.

“I was thinking,” Monteith began, feeling his way with caution, but with a magnanimous air, “that perhaps—­after all—­for the children’s sake, Frida—­”