tie between them.

To indulge these emotions he fell into the habit, on Sunday afternoons,
of solitary walks prolonged till after dusk. The days were lengthening,
there was a touch of spring in the air, and his wanderings now usually
led him to the Park and its outlying regions.

One Sunday, tired of aimless locomotion, he took a cab at the Park gates
and let it carry him out to the Riverside Drive. It was a gray afternoon
streaked with east wind. Glennard's cab advanced slowly, and as he
leaned back, gazing with absent intentness at the deserted paths that
wound under bare boughs between grass banks of premature vividness, his
attention was arrested by two figures walking ahead of him. This couple,
who had the path to themselves, moved at an uneven pace, as though
adapting their gait to a conversation marked by meditative intervals.
Now and then they paused, and in one of these pauses the lady, turning
toward her companion, showed Glennard the outline of his wife's profile.
The man was Flamel.

The blood rushed to Glennard's forehead. He sat up with a jerk and
pushed back the lid in the roof of the hansom; but when the cabman bent
down he dropped into his seat without speaking. Then, becoming
conscious of the prolonged interrogation of the lifted lid, he called
out--"Turn--drive back--anywhere--I'm in a hurry--"

As the cab swung round he caught a last glimpse of the two figures. They
had not moved; Alexa, with bent head, stood listening.

"My God, my God--" he groaned.

It was hideous--it was abominable--he could not understand it. The woman
was nothing to him--less than nothing--yet the blood hummed in his ears
and hung a cloud before him. He knew it was only the stirring of the
primal instinct, that it had no more to do with his reasoning self
than any reflex impulse of the body; but that merely lowered anguish
to disgust. Yes, it was disgust he felt--almost a physical nausea. The
poisonous fumes of life were in his lungs. He was sick, unutterably
sick....

He drove home and went to his room. They were giving a little dinner
that night, and when he came down the guests were arriving. He looked at
his wife: her beauty was extraordinary, but it seemed to him the beauty
of a smooth sea along an unlit coast. She frightened him.

He sat late that night in his study. He heard the parlor-maid lock the
front door; then his wife went upstairs and the lights were put out.
His brain was like some great empty hall with