ore hopeless of
her entering into the torturous psychology of an act that he himself
could no longer explain or understand. It would have been easier had
she been more complex, more feminine--if he could have counted on
her imaginative sympathy or her moral obtuseness--but he was sure of
neither. He was sure of nothing but that, for a time, he must avoid her.
Glennard could not rid himself of the delusion that by and by his action
would cease to make its consequences felt. He would not have cared to
own to himself that he counted on the dulling of his sensibilities: he
preferred to indulge the vague hypothesis that extraneous circumstances
would somehow efface the blot upon his conscience. In his worst moments
of self-abasement he tried to find solace in the thought that Flamel had
sanctioned his course. Flamel, at the outset, must have guessed to
whom the letters were addressed; yet neither then nor afterward had he
hesitated to advise their publication. This thought drew Glennard to
him in fitful impulses of friendliness, from each of which there was a
sharper reaction of distrust and aversion. When Flamel was not at the
house, he missed the support of his tacit connivance; when he was there,
his presence seemed the assertion of an intolerable claim.

Early in the winter the Glennards took possession of the little house
that was to cost them almost nothing. The change brought Glennard the
immediate relief of seeing less of his wife, and of being protected, in
her presence, by the multiplied preoccupations of town life. Alexa, who
could never appear hurried, showed the smiling abstraction of a pretty
woman to whom the social side of married life has not lost its novelty.
Glennard, with the recklessness of a man fresh from his first financial
imprudence, encouraged her in such little extravagances as her good
sense at first resisted. Since they had come to town, he argued, they
might as well enjoy themselves. He took a sympathetic view of the
necessity of new gowns, he gave her a set of furs at Christmas, and
before the New Year they had agreed on the obligation of adding a
parlour-maid to their small establishment.

Providence the very next day hastened to justify this measure by placing
on Glennard's breakfast-plate an envelope bearing the name of the
publishers to whom he had sold Mrs. Aubyn's letters. It happened to be
the only letter the early post had brought, and he glanced across the
table at his wife, who had