“Who isn’t happy?”

“I’m not altogether.”

“You!  But you’ve everything to make you.”

“I know.  But I’ll try and explain.”

“You needn’t.”

“Why?  You don’t know what troubles me.”

“That’s nothing to do with it.  All troubles are alike in this respect, that the only thing to be done is to mend what’s wrong.  If you can’t, you must make the best of it,” he declared grimly.

After this rough-and-ready advice, Mavis felt that it would be futile to attempt a further explanation of her disquiet.

“Thanks; but it isn’t so easy as it sounds,” she said.

“Really!” he remarked, not without a suggestion of sarcasm in his exclamation.

*

About this time, Mavis saw a good deal of Perigal.  He rented from her husband the farm that Harold had purchased soon after his marriage, and in which he had purposed living.  Perigal had long since spent the ten thousand pounds he had inherited from his mother; he was now living on the four hundred a year his wife possessed.  If anything, Mavis encouraged his frequent visits; his illuminating comments on men and things took her out of herself; also, if the truth be told, Mavis’s heart held resentment against the man who had played so considerable a part in her life.  Whenever Mavis was in London, the sight of a fallen woman always fed this dislike; she reflected that, but for the timely help she had enjoyed, she might have been driven to a like means of getting money if her child had been in want.  Another thing that urged her against Perigal was that she constantly noticed how negligently many of the married women of her acquaintance interpreted their wifely duties, and, in most cases, to husbands who had dowered their mates with affection and worldly goods.  She reflected that, by all the laws of justice, Perigal should have appreciated to the full the treasure of love and passion which she had poured out so lavishly at his feet.

Perigal, all unconscious of the way in which Mavis regarded him, went out of his way to pay her attention.

One summer afternoon, while Harold rested indoors, Mavis gave Perigal tea beneath the shade of a witch-elm on the lawn.  She was looking particularly alluring; if she were at all doubtful of this fact, the admiration expressed in Perigal’s eyes would have reassured her.  They had been talking lightly, brightly, each in secret pursuing the bent of their own feelings for the other, when the spectre of Mavis’s spiritual troublings blotted out the sunlight and the brilliant gladness of the summer afternoon.  She was silent for awhile, presently to be aware that Perigal’s eyes were fixed on her face.  She looked towards him, at which he sighed deeply.

“Aren’t you happy?” she asked.

“How can I be?”

“You’ve everything you want in life.”

“Have I?  Since when?”

“The day you married.”