ded her
return and the recommencement of the old discordant life. Kellson was,
no doubt, in some respects a difficult man to live with, but he
nevertheless would have made a reasonable, sympathetic woman moderately
happy. His habit was to act reasonably according to his lights in all
his daily relations, both official and domestic. His wife was an
extremely emotional person, who could be persuaded to do a thing, or
leave it undone, as the case might be, by arguments based upon
conventionalism or generosity, but never by those drawn from justice or
reasonableness. Kellson had at first set himself the task of showing
her the saving graces of reasonableness, but he soon gave the attempt
up in disgust. But things would have come all right between them had
there only been a child.

Kellson had not been a successful man. At the beginning, his career
promised well. Fifteen years previously he had been ahead of most men
of his own term of service, but now others--some of them considerably
his juniors--had forged past him. He had noticed all his life that he
seldom carried any important enterprise to a successful conclusion. Up
to a certain point, he usually achieved rapid success, but then
difficulties unseen before arose one after the other, and failure, or
else only success very much qualified, resulted. He had often
endeavoured to find out the reason of this, but had not been able to do
so. He came to the conclusion that there was some weak strand in the
fibre of his character, but where this lay, or how to strengthen it, he
was unable to discover or devise.

His transfer to Marsonton, although it involved no curtailment of
salary, was really a reduction in point of status. At his last station
he had taken a. stand upon a matter in which the prejudices of a large
and influential class had been against him. The Government considered
he had been injudicious, and transferred him. He did not much mind; all
that troubled him, was the nuisance involved in packing up and moving
his books and furniture. His conscience was quite clear; he had done
what he thought: to be his duty. Yet he was honest enough to admit that
however right the abstract principle was, its application in the
particular circumstances involved may have been injudicious. His ideal
of official responsibility was a very high one, and during the whole
twenty-seven years of his service he had never done a shady thing;
neither had he ever allowed fear of the consequ