f
thought.

One thing he could do to restore his sanity. He would walk over to
Lavender Hill, and accompany his wife on her return home. Indeed, the
mere difficulty of getting through the afternoon advised this project.
He could not employ himself, and knew that his imagination, once
inflamed, would leave him not a moment's rest. Yes, he would walk to
Lavender Hill, and ramble about that region until Monica had had
reasonable time for talk with her sister.

About three o'clock there fell a heavy shower of rain. Strangely
against his habits, Widdowson turned into a quiet public-house, and sat
for a quarter of an hour at the bar, drinking a glass of whisky. During
the past week he had taken considerably more wine than usual at meals;
he seemed to need the support. Whilst sipping at his glass of spirits,
he oddly enough fell into talk with the barmaid, a young woman of some
charms, and what appeared to be unaffected modesty. Not for twenty
years had Widdowson conversed with a member of this sisterhood. Their
dialogue was made up of the most trifling of trivialities--weather, a
railway accident, the desirability of holidays at this season. And when
at length he rose and put an end to the chat it was with appreciable
reluctance.

'A good, nice sort of girl,' he went away saying to himself. 'Pity she
should be serving at a bar--hearing doubtful talk, and seeing very
often vile sights. A nice, soft-spoken little girl.'

And he mused upon her remembered face with a complacency which soothed
his feelings.

Of a sudden he was checked by the conversion of his sentiment into
thought. Would he not have been a much happier man if he had married a
girl distinctly his inferior in mind and station? Provided she were
sweet, lovable, docile--such a wife would have spared him all the
misery he had known with Monica. From the first he had understood that
Monica was no representative shopgirl, and on that very account he had
striven so eagerly to win her. But it was a mistake. He had loved her,
still loved her, with all the emotion of which he was capable. How many
hours' genuine happiness of soul had that love afforded him? The
minutest fraction of the twelve months for which she had been his wife.
And of suffering, often amounting to frantic misery, he could count
many weeks. Could such a marriage as this be judged a marriage at all,
in any true sense of the word?

'Let me ask myself a question. If Monica were absolutely free to ch