? Ah,
business--business--professional duties ... I understand. Many
husbands, I know, find it impossible to join their wives here except
for the week-end." She cocked her head on one side and languished at
him through screwed-up eyes. "But marriage is one long sacrifice, as I
used often to remind my Ellen--"

Archer's heart stopped with the queer jerk which it had given once
before, and which seemed suddenly to slam a door between himself and
the outer world; but this break of continuity must have been of the
briefest, for he presently heard Medora answering a question he had
apparently found voice to put.

"No, I am not staying here, but with the Blenkers, in their delicious
solitude at Portsmouth. Beaufort was kind enough to send his famous
trotters for me this morning, so that I might have at least a glimpse
of one of Regina's garden-parties; but this evening I go back to rural
life. The Blenkers, dear original beings, have hired a primitive old
farm-house at Portsmouth where they gather about them representative
people ..." She drooped slightly beneath her protecting brim, and
added with a faint blush: "This week Dr. Agathon Carver is holding a
series of Inner Thought meetings there. A contrast indeed to this gay
scene of worldly pleasure--but then I have always lived on contrasts!
To me the only death is monotony. I always say to Ellen: Beware of
monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins. But my poor child is
going through a phase of exaltation, of abhorrence of the world. You
know, I suppose, that she has declined all invitations to stay at
Newport, even with her grandmother Mingott? I could hardly persuade
her to come with me to the Blenkers', if you will believe it! The life
she leads is morbid, unnatural. Ah, if she had only listened to me
when it was still possible ... When the door was still open ... But
shall we go down and watch this absorbing match? I hear your May is
one of the competitors."

Strolling toward them from the tent Beaufort advanced over the lawn,
tall, heavy, too tightly buttoned into a London frock-coat, with one of
his own orchids in its buttonhole. Archer, who had not seen him for
two or three months, was struck by the change in his appearance. In
the hot summer light his floridness seemed heavy and bloated, and but
for his erect square-shouldered walk he would have looked like an
over-fed and over-dressed old man.

There were all sorts of rumours afloat abo