nd his wife contended. Why
did he not say, "A lady took my umbrella, another gave me this that I
might call for my umbrella"? Because Jacky would have disbelieved him?
Partly, but chiefly because he was sentimental. No affection gathered
round the card, but it symbolised the life of culture, that Jacky should
never spoil. At night he would say to himself, "Well, at all events, she
doesn't know about that card. Yah! done her there!"

Poor Jacky! she was not a bad sort, and had a great deal to bear.
She drew her own conclusion--she was only capable of drawing one
conclusion--and in the fulness of time she acted upon it. All the Friday
Leonard had refused to speak to her, and had spent the evening observing
the stars. On the Saturday he went up, as usual, to town, but he came
not back Saturday night, nor Sunday morning, nor Sunday afternoon. The
inconvenience grew intolerable, and though she was now of a retiring
habit, and shy of women, she went up to Wickham Place. Leonard returned
in her absence. The card, the fatal card, was gone from the pages of
Ruskin, and he guessed what had happened.

"Well?" he had exclaimed, greeting her with peals of laughter. "I know
where you've been, but you don't know where I've been."

Jacky sighed, said, "Len, I do think you might explain," and resumed
domesticity.

Explanations were difficult at this stage, and Leonard was too silly--or
it is tempting to write, too sound a chap to attempt them. His reticence
was not entirely the shoddy article that a business life promotes, the
reticence that pretends that nothing is something, and hides behind
the Daily Telegraph. The adventurer, also, is reticent, and it is an
adventure for a clerk to walk for a few hours in darkness. You may laugh
at him, you who have slept nights out on the veldt, with your rifle
beside you and all the atmosphere of adventure pat. And you also may
laugh who think adventures silly. But do not be surprised if Leonard is
shy whenever he meets you, and if the Schlegels rather than Jacky hear
about the dawn.

That the Schlegels had not thought him foolish became a permanent
joy. He was at his best when he thought of them. It buoyed him as he
journeyed home beneath fading heavens. Somehow the barriers of wealth
had fallen, and there had been--he could not phrase it--a general
assertion of the wonder of the world. "My conviction," says the mystic,
"gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it," and they