This was an unstable state of mind, particularly as he had not yet
destroyed the photograph which he kept locked in his despatch box. He
had not returned it, either; it was too late by several months to do
that, but he was still fool enough to consider the idea at
moments--sometimes after a nursery romp with the children, or after a
good-night kiss from Drina on the lamp-lit landing, or when some
commonplace episode of the domesticity around him hurt him, cutting him
to the quick with its very simplicity, as when Nina's hand fell
naturally into Austin's on their way to "lean over" the children at
bedtime, or their frank absorption in conjugal discussion to his own
exclusion as he sat brooding by the embers in the library.

"I'm like a dead man at times," he said to himself; "nothing to expect
of a man who is done for; and worst of all, I no longer expect anything
of myself."

This was sufficiently morbid, and he usually proved it by going early to
his own quarters, where dawn sometimes surprised him asleep in his
chair, white and worn, all the youth in his hollow face extinct, his
wife's picture fallen face downward on the floor.

But he always picked it up again when he awoke, and carefully dusted
it, too, even when half stupefied with sleep.

* * * * *

Returning from their gallop, Miss Erroll had very little to say. Selwyn,
too, was silent and absent-minded. The girl glanced furtively at him
from time to time, not at all enlightened. Man, naturally, was to her an
unknown quantity. In fact she had no reason to suspect him of being