And then the strange thing happened. Arthur reformed. One might almost
say that he reformed with a jerk. It was a parallel case to those
sudden conversions at Welsh revival meetings. On Monday evening he had
been at his worst. On the following morning he was a changed man. Not
even after the original thunderstorm had he been more docile. Maud
could not believe that first. The lip, once bitten, was stretched in a
smile. She looked for the frown. It was not there.

Next day it was the same; and the day after that. When a week had gone
by, and still the improvement was maintained, Maud felt that she might
now look upon it as permanent. A great load seemed to have been taken
off her mind. She revised her views on the world. It was a very good
world, quite one of the best, with Arthur beaming upon it like a sun.

A number of eminent poets and essayists, in the course of the last few
centuries, have recorded, in their several ways, their opinion that one
can have too much of a good thing. The truth applies even to such a
good thing as absence of jealousy. Little by little Maud began to grow
uneasy. It began to come home to her that she preferred the old Arthur,
of the scowl and the gnawed lip. Of him she had at least been sure.
Whatever discomfort she may have suffered from his spirited imitations
of Othello, at any rate they had proved that he loved her. She would
have accepted gladly an equal amount of discomfort now in exchange for
the same certainty. She could not read this new Arthur. His thoughts
were a closed book. Superficially, he was all that she could have
wished. He still continued to escort her to the Tube, to buy her
occasional presents, to tap, when conversing, the pleasantly
sentimental vein. But now these things were not enough. Her heart was
troubled. Her thoughts frightened her. The little black imp at the back
of her mind kept whispering and whispering, till at last she was forced