is in India, taking up the
Mardipore power scheme again now that he is out of the army.... No, it
is simply that I was hopelessly disappointed with everything that a
good woman and a decent marriage had to give me. Pure disappointment and
vexation. The anti-climax to an immense expectation built up throughout
an imaginative boyhood and youth and early manhood. I was shocked
and ashamed at my own disappointment. I thought it mean and base.
Nevertheless this orderly household into which I had placed my life,
these almost methodical connubialities...."

He broke off in mid-sentence.

Dr. Martineau shook his head disapprovingly.

"No," he said, "it wasn't fair to your wife."

"It was shockingly unfair. I have always realized that. I've done what
I could to make things up to her.... Heaven knows what counter
disappointments she has concealed.... But it is no good arguing about
rights and wrongs now. This is not an apology for my life. I am telling
you what happened.

"Not for me to judge," said Dr. Martineau. "Go on."

"By marrying I had got nothing that my soul craved for, I had satisfied
none but the most transitory desires and I had incurred a tremendous
obligation. That obligation didn't restrain me from making desperate
lunges at something vaguely beautiful that I felt was necessary to me;
but it did cramp and limit these lunges. So my story flops down into the
comedy of the lying, cramped intrigues of a respectable, married man...I
was still driven by my dream of some extravagantly beautiful inspiration
called love and I sought it like an area sneak. Gods! What a story it
is when one brings it all together! I couldn't believe that the glow and
sweetness I dreamt of were not in the world--somewhere. Hidden away
from me. I seemed to catch glimpses of the dear lost thing, now in the
corners of a smiling mouth, now in dark eyes beneath a black smoke of
hair, now in a slim form seen against the sky. Often I cared nothing for
the woman I made love to. I cared for the thing she seemed to be hiding
from me...."

Sir Richmond's voice altered.

"I don't see what possible good it can do to talk over these things." He
began to row and rowed perhaps a score of strokes. Then he stopped
and the boat drove on with a whisper of water at the bow and over the
outstretched oar blades.

"What a muddle and mockery the whole thing is!" he cried. "What a
fumbling old fool old Mother Nature has been! She drives us into
indignity an