nd indulged so far as even a small child could
wish. He always _had_ got what he wanted. Hence naturally sprang a
sort of self-centredom, a tendency to think first of what _he_ desired,
something which, well, hang it all, no, it wasn't selfishness, but
merely that self-confidence which all men who meant to get things done
must first of all possess....

None the less, every now and then (he noticed it more, since Helena had
been with him), he did, he knew, do things no doubt quite justifiable
if one were thinking only of success, efficiency, and so forth; but
rather beastly from the other person's--from Helena's--standpoint. It
was so easy, when defending your own interests (and otherwise you'd get
no work done ever), to be thoughtless, irritable, mean.

About those lectures or whatever they were of the poor little girl's,
for instance....

Ought he, came the doubt when he was back in his own den at one minute
past five o'clock--ought he to have given in to her for once, if she
was really so immensely keen to take him? After all there often were
days when he had finished work easily by six o'clock; whole months,
even, between books, when he did no work after tea; but there was such
a thing as System, and though a married man, he was quite bachelor
enough to love this time of solitude with pipe and books. Helena was
sweet; no man could ever have been luckier about his wife; but he saw
her for much more than one-half the day and all of it on Sundays.

Yes really, he could not see that she had any right to look for more.
Perhaps those City men took their wives to these precious causeries,
but they were ever so much more away. Oh yes, he saw a lot of her and
however much she might complain, he knew that she was really lucky....

All the same, as he never had and the dear child wanted it, perhaps----?

Whereat Hubert, having worked comfortably around his usual
circle--Selfishness, Remorse, Ample Self-Excuse, and Noble
Expiation--got up, feeling very light of heart, and went back to the
drawing-room.

Helena was startled. She never thought of tragedies, she had known
none in her well-sheltered days, or she might easily have feared that
there was something wrong. Never in these two years and more had he
come back, once gone, till dinner-time. Many modern wives might have
resented such a sudden entry. Luckily this specimen was in no more
compromising a position than that of eating the last jam sandwich, a
thing