and disreputable expected his notice. It enchanted him, for
example, to ask the old Duchess of Dunes and Violet Melrose to dine
with the Vicar of Altringham, on his way to Switzerland for a month's
holiday, and to watch the face of the Vicar's wife while the Duchess
narrated her last difficulties with book-makers and money-lenders, and
Violet proclaimed the rights of Love and Genius to all that had once
been supposed to belong exclusively to Respectability and Dulness.

Susy had to confess that her own amusements were hardly of a higher
order; but then she put up with them for lack of better, whereas
Strefford, who might have had what he pleased, was completely satisfied
with such triumphs.

Somehow, in spite of his honours and his opportunities, he seemed to
have shrunk. The old Strefford had certainly been a larger person,
and she wondered if material prosperity were always a beginning of
ossification. Strefford had been much more fun when he lived by his
wits. Sometimes, now, when he tried to talk of politics, or assert
himself on some question of public interest, she was startled by his
limitations. Formerly, when he was not sure of his ground, it had been
his way to turn the difficulty by glib nonsense or easy irony; now he
was actually dull, at times almost pompous. She noticed too, for the
first time, that he did not always hear clearly when several people were
talking at once, or when he was at the theatre; and he developed a habit
of saying over and over again: "Does so-and-so speak indistinctly? Or am
I getting deaf, I wonder?" which wore on her nerves by its suggestion of
a corresponding mental infirmity.

These thoughts did not always trouble her. The current of idle activity
on which they were both gliding was her native element as well as his;
and never had its tide been as swift, its waves as buoyant. In his
relation to her, too, he was full of tact and consideration. She saw
that he still remembered their frightened exchange of glances after
their first kiss; and the sense of this little hidden spring of
imagination in him was sometimes enough for her thirst.

She had always had a rather masculine punctuality in keeping her word,
and after she had promised Strefford to take steps toward a divorce
she had promptly set about doing it. A sudden reluctance prevented her
asking the advice of friends like Ellie Vanderlyn, whom she knew to be
in the thick of the same negotiations, and all she could think of