him. Of course I should really have done nothing of the sort. I
remained five minutes, while my companions talked of the new book,
and when Drayton Deane appealed to me for my opinion of it I made
answer, getting up, that I detested Hugh Vereker and simply
couldn't read him. I departed with the moral certainty that as the
door closed behind me Deane would brand me for awfully superficial.
His hostess wouldn't contradict THAT at least.

I continue to trace with a briefer touch our intensely odd
successions. Three weeks after this came Vereker's death, and
before the year was out the death of his wife. That poor lady I
had never seen, but I had had a futile theory that, should she
survive him long enough to be decorously accessible, I might
approach her with the feeble flicker of my plea. Did she know and
if she knew would she speak? It was much to be presumed that for
more reasons than one she would have nothing to say; but when she
passed out of all reach I felt renannouncement indeed my appointed
lot. I was shut up in my obsession for ever--my gaolers had gone
off with the key. I find myself quite as vague as a captive in a
dungeon about the tinge that further elapsed before Mrs. Corvick
became the wife of Drayton Deane. I had foreseen, through my bars,
this end of the business, though there was no indecent haste and
our friendship had fallen rather off. They were both so "awfully
intellectual" that it struck people as a suitable match, but I had
measured better than any one the wealth of understanding the bride
would contribute to the union. Never, for a marriage in literary
circles--so the newspapers described the alliance--had a lady been
so bravely dowered. I began with due promptness to look for the
fruit of the affair--that fruit, I mean, of which the premonitory
symptoms would be peculiarly visible in the husband. Taking for