dred, and that Charlie's long nose
annoyed him. Then he returned, first-class, to his own affairs.

Of the two, perhaps three, experiments in Social Relations which he had
then in hand, one interested him acutely. It had run for some months and
promised most variegated and interesting developments, on which he dwelt
luxuriously all the way to town. When he reached his flat he was not
well prepared for a twelve-page letter explaining, in the diction of the
Immoderate Left which rubricates its I's and illuminates its T's, that
the lady had realised greater attractions in another Soul. She
re-stated, rather than pleaded, the gospel of the Immoderate Left as her
justification, and ended in an impassioned demand for her right to
express herself in and on her own life, through which, she pointed out,
she could pass but once. She added that if, later, she should discover
Midmore was 'essentially complementary to her needs,' she would tell him
so. That Midmore had himself written much the same sort of
epistle--barring the hint of return--to a woman of whom his needs for
self-expression had caused him to weary three years before, did not
assist him in the least. He expressed himself to the gas-fire in terms
essential but not complimentary. Then he reflected on the detached
criticism of his best friends and her best friends, male and female,
with whom he and she and others had talked so openly while their gay
adventure was in flower. He recalled, too--this must have been about
midnight--her analysis from every angle, remote and most intimate, of
the mate to whom she had been adjudged under the base convention which
is styled marriage. Later, at that bad hour when the cattle wake for a
little, he remembered her in other aspects and went down into the hell
appointed; desolate, desiring, with no God to call upon. About eleven
o'clock next morning Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and
Zophar the Naamathite called upon him 'for they had made appointment
together' to see how he took it; but the janitor told them that Job had
gone--into the country, he believed.

Midmore's relief when he found his story was not written across his
aching temples for Mr. Sperrit to read--the defeated lover, like the
successful one, believes all earth privy to his soul--was put down by
Mr. Sperrit to quite different causes. He led him into a morning-room.
The rest of the house seemed to be full of people, singing to a loud
piano idiotic songs abou