slammed to, and drew a long savouring breath. Was it spring
tickling her senses--whipping up nostalgia for her 'clown,' against all
wisdom and outraged virtue? A male scent! A faint reek of cigars and
lavender-water not smelt since that early autumn night six months ago,
when she had called him 'the limit.' Whence came it, or was it ghost of
scent--sheer emanation from memory? She looked round her. Nothing--not
a thing, no tiniest disturbance of her hall, nor of the diningroom. A
little day-dream of a scent--illusory, saddening, silly! In the silver
basket were new cards, two with 'Mr. and Mrs. Polegate Thom,' and one
with 'Mr. Polegate Thom' thereon; she sniffed them, but they smelled
severe. 'I must be tired,' she thought, 'I'll go and lie down.' Upstairs
the drawing-room was darkened, waiting for some hand to give it
evening light; and she passed on up to her bedroom. This, too, was
half-curtained and dim, for it was six o'clock. Winifred threw off her
coat--that scent again!--then stood, as if shot, transfixed against the
bed-rail. Something dark had risen from the sofa in the far corner. A
word of horror--in her family--escaped her: "God!"

"It's I--Monty," said a voice.

Clutching the bed-rail, Winifred reached up and turned the switch of the
light hanging above her dressing-table. He appeared just on the rim
of the light's circumference, emblazoned from the absence of his
watch-chain down to boots neat and sooty brown, but--yes!--split at the
toecap. His chest and face were shadowy. Surely he was thin--or was it a
trick of the light? He advanced, lighted now from toe-cap to the top of
his dark head--surely a little grizzled! His complexion had darkened,
sallowed; his black moustache had lost boldness, become sardonic; there
were lines which she did not know about his face. There was no pin in
his tie. His suit--ah!--she knew that--but how unpressed, unglossy! She
stared again at the toe-cap of his boot. Something big and relentless
had been 'at him,' had turned and twisted, raked and scraped him. And
she stayed, not speaking, motionless, staring at that crack across the
toe.

"Well!" he said, "I got the order. I'm back."

Winifred's bosom began to heave. The nostalgia for her husband which had
rushed up with that scent was struggling with a deeper jealousy than any
she had felt yet. There he was--a dark, and as if harried, shadow of
his sleek and brazen self! What force had done this to him--squeezed him
like