The "grand passion" (it is unfortunate that no single word in the English language exactly pictures that emotional process) was a little beyond Caroline Staley's philosophy.

Yet within twelve hours of Aliette's interview with Hector, even Caroline Staley realized that "Miss Aliette was about through with that husband of hers." Lennard and the rest of the staff--though Caroline refused to gossip--were also aware, basement-wise, of the connubial position. In fact, at Lancaster Gate, only Mollie remained in ignorance.

For, at the moment, Mollie Fullerford was far too absorbed to bother herself overlong about either sister or brother-in-law; a sublime selfishness held her aloof from both.

The girl's mind was concentrated on Jimmy. It had become a point of honor with her not to think of anybody except Jimmy. Jimmy--for his own sake--must be neither "fascinated" nor "put off." He must be given his exact measure of attraction as of repulsion, his exact chance of finding out her faults as well as her virtues. Then, when he had definitely fallen in or out of love with the real her--she would decide exactly how much she could love the real him. "Marriage," the girl said to herself, "is a pretty serious business. Jimmy and I mustn't make any mistake about it."

Mollie Fullerford, you see, was of the modern young, who are trying, vainly, to avoid the troubles of their romantic and unreasoning elders--such troubles, for instance, as Hector's.

Hector, reticent always, confided his troubles to nobody. He spent the first twelve hours after the quarrel in kicking himself for a fool and a savage who had nearly thrashed his wife; the next twelve in cursing himself for a fool and a softy who ought to have thrashed his wife--and the rest of the week fighting against the impulse to apologize.

Meanwhile he was a stranger in his own house; excluded, as surely as though he had been a servant under notice, from domestic conversation. His wife had taken to breakfasting in bed (the rattle of the tray infuriated him every morning), and refused to get up till he had left the house: he, retorting in the only way open to him, dined at his clubs. On the one occasion when they did meet, her manners were beyond criticism--and her unattainable beauty a positive bar to any plans for sex-consolation.

As a matter of psychological fact, both husband and wife were in a momentary state of complete sex-revulsion. Hector, thwarted of his one desire, seeing Aliette unobtainable as the only woman in the world; and Aliette--love's dream obscured by thought of love's material consequences--regarding herself, for the nonce, as the mere quarry of two males, a quarry anxious only to escape both pursuers.

Twice, at least, Aliette's thoughts renounced womanhood completely. The physical Hector, the Hector of the writhing lips, she hated; but when her yearning for the physical Ronnie grew so desperately acute that she had to rush out of the library lest she should telephone to him; when every post which brought no letter seemed the last bodily hurt she could endure: then, looking back on her lost virginity of temperament, she could be amazingly sorry for, amazingly grateful to the abstemious Hector of the last three years.

Yet all the time, she knew subconsciously that she loved Ronnie; that, without him, life was one mazed loneliness.

Aliette, like Hector, kept her own counsel. Mary O'Riordan, to whom--as in duty bound--she confided a hint of her distress, pumped her for full confession, but pumped in vain. Only Ponto, the huge harlequin Dane with the magpie coat and the princely manners, shared her mazed loneliness. She used to fetch the dog, every after-lunch-time, from the garage in Westbourne Street where he had his abode; and wander with him by the hour together through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Ponto, unlike her other pursuers, desired nothing but an occasional caress. He would pad and pad after her, close to heel, disdainful of all distractions, his eyes on the hem of her skirt, his stern slapping only the mildest disapproval of an occasional fly. And when she sat her down to meditate, the beast--as though conscious of the fret in his mistress--would content affection with the rare up-thrust of an enormous consolatory paw.

Vaguely during that week Ponto's mistress conceived the scheme of sending to Moor Park for Miracle, of condescending to ride in the Row. Dumb animals, of a sudden, seemed so much wiser, so much kinder than men. But to ride in the Row would make one conspicuous, and instinct warned her that the less conspicuous she made herself during the season, the easier things might be--in the event of a social crash.