grown, if not handsomer, at least more vivid and expressive; her
beauty had become more communicable: it was as though she had
learned the conscious exercise of intuitive attributes and now
used her effects with the discrimination of an artist skilled in
values. To a dispassionate critic (as Glennard now rated himself)
the art may at times have been a little too obvious. Her attempts
at lightness lacked spontaneity, and she sometimes rasped him by
laughing like Julia Armiger; but he had enough imagination to
perceive that, in respect of the wife's social arts, a husband
necessarily sees the wrong side of the tapestry.

In this ironical estimate of their relation Glennard found himself
strangely relieved of all concern as to his wife's feelings for
Flamel. From an Olympian pinnacle of indifference he calmly
surveyed their inoffensive antics. It was surprising how his
cheapening of his wife put him at ease with himself. Far as he
and she were from each other they yet had, in a sense, the tacit
nearness of complicity. Yes, they were accomplices; he could no
more be jealous of her than she could despise him. The jealousy
that would once have seemed a blur on her whiteness now appeared
like a tribute to ideals in which he no longer believed. . . .


Glennard was little given to exploring the outskirts of
literature. He always skipped the "literary notices" in the
papers and he had small leisure for the intermittent pleasures of
the periodical. He had therefore no notion of the prolonged
reverberations which the "Aubyn Letters" had awakened in the
precincts of criticism. When the book ceased to be talked about
he supposed it had ceased to be read; and this apparent subsidence