ly plunged
with avidity into the theological review.

For some two hours he sat enthralled by an able summary of the chief
Tuebingen positions; then suddenly threw himself back with a stretch and
a laugh.

"Wonder what the chap's doing that's got my post! Not reading theology,
I'll be bound."

The reflection followed that were he at that moment Home Secretary and
in the cabinet, he would not probably be reading it either--nor left to
a solitary evening. Friends would be dropping in to congratulate--the
modern equivalent of the old "turba clientium."

As his thoughts wandered, the drawing-room clock struck eleven. He rose,
astonished and impatient. Where was Kitty?

By midnight she had not arrived. Ashe heard the butler moving in the
hall and summoned him.

"There may have been some mishap to the coach, Wilson. Perhaps they have
stayed at Richmond. Anyway, go to bed. I'll wait for her ladyship."

He returned to his arm-chair and his books, but soon drew Kitty's
<i>couvre-pied</i> over him and went to sleep.

When he awoke, daylight was in the room. "What has happened to them?" he
asked himself, in a sudden anxiety.

And amid the silence of the dawn he paced up and down, a prey for the
first time to black depression. He was besieged by memories of the last
two months, their anxieties and quarrels--the waste of time and
opportunity--the stabs to feeling and self-respect. Once he found
himself groaning aloud, "Kitty! Kitty!"

When this huge, distracting London was left behind, when he had her to
himself amid the Scotch heather and birch, should he find her
again--conquer her again--as in the exquisite days after their marriage?
He thought of Cliffe with a kind of proud torment, disdaining to be
jealous or afraid. Kitty had amused herself--had tested her freedom, his
patience, to the utmost. Might she now be content, and reward him a
little for a self-control, a philosophy, which had not been easy!

A French novel on Kitty's little table drew his attention. He thought
not without a discomfortable humor of what a French husband would have
made of a similar situation--recalling the remark of a French
acquaintance on some case illustrating the freedom of English wives. "Il
y a un element turc dans le mari francais, qui nous rendrait ces
moeurs-la impossibles!"

<i>A la bonne heure</i>! Let the Frenchman keep up his seraglio
standards as he pleased. An Englishman trusts both his wife and his
daughter--scorns, ind