over the photographs of New York actresses.  On Sunday afternoons Haskett would take her for a walk, pushing Lily ahead of them in a white enameled perambulator, and Waythorn had a vision of the people they would stop and talk to.  He could fancy how pretty Alice must have looked, in a dress adroitly constructed from the hints of a New York fashion-paper; how she must have looked down on the other women, chafing at her life, and secretly feeling that she belonged in a bigger place.

For the moment his foremost thought was one of wonder at the way in which she had shed the phase of existence which her marriage with Haskett implied.  It was as if her whole aspect, every gesture, every inflection, every allusion, were a studied negation of that period of her life.  If she had denied being married to Haskett she could hardly have stood more convicted of duplicity than in this obliteration of the self which had been his wife.

Waythorn started up, checking himself in the analysis of her motives.  What right had he to create a fantastic effigy of her and then pass judgment on it?  She had spoken vaguely of her first marriage as unhappy, had hinted, with becoming reticence, that Haskett had wrought havoc among her young illusions....It was a pity for Waythorn’s peace of mind that Haskett’s very inoffensiveness shed a new light on the nature of those illusions.  A man would rather think that his wife has been brutalized by her first husband than that the process has been reversed.

“Why, how do you do?” she said with a distinct note of pleasure

IV

“MR. WAYTHORN, I don’t like that French governess of Lily’s.”

Haskett, subdued and apologetic, stood before Waythorn in the library, revolving his shabby hat in his hand.

Waythorn, surprised in his armchair over the evening paper, stared back perplexedly at his visitor.

“You’ll excuse my asking to see you,” Haskett continued.  “But this is my last visit, and I thought if I could have a word with you it would be a better way than writing to Mrs. Waythorn’s lawyer.”

Waythorn rose uneasily.  He did not like the French governess either; but that was irrelevant.

“I am not so sure of that,” he returned stiffly; “but since you wish it I will give your message to—­my wife.”  He always hesitated over the possessive pronoun in addressing Haskett.

The latter sighed.  “I don’t know as that will help much.  She didn’t like it when I spoke to her.”

Waythorn turned red.  “When did you see her?” he asked.

“Not since the first day I came to see Lily—­right after she was taken sick.  I remarked to her then that I didn’t like the governess.”

Waythorn made no answer.  He remembered distinctly that, after that first visit, he had asked his wife if she had seen Haskett.  She had lied to him then, but she had respected his wishes since; and the incident cast a curious light on her character.  He was sure she would not have seen Haskett that first day if she had divined that Waythorn would object, and the fact that she did not divine it was almost as disagreeable to the latter as the discovery that she had lied to him.